47 (and a bit more) and not out

As a child I drew pictures of racing cars, houses, rockets, tanks, footballers and other sportsmen, typical boy stuff. I used to number them; my Thunderbirds and Ferraris never had single digits, they were mostly numbered 47. I wasn’t good at drawing curved numbers so I used a ruler to make the digits more realistic. A four and a seven sat well together and there had to be double figures as one wasn’t enough.

Ambition for better

Online, as with offline, to get people to really hear your voice and message, you need to be effective in both word and deed. Just being nice or popular doesn’t mean you are going to be effective or influential or make people take notice of what you have to say. To really make things happen you need to have the respect of and respect for others and be trusted to conduct your self in an appropriate manner, even when debate is fierce.

White smoke

Analogies help explain things that are complicated; whether we overcomplicate them in the first place; possible and in some cases probable or whether they are things or processes that just aren’t easy to explain. I suppose it’s a sort of translation for the ‘man on the street’.

Questioning Y

Budgets in the public sector have been hit hard so you have to be really creative (and be supported!) to both keep your professional development on track and also be increasingly innovative in doing things that make people think and behave differently. So on Tuesday I went to Birmingham to #commscamp13  Background here.

The naked public servant

Background

I don’t consider myself a complicated person so I usually keep things simple. On the odd occasion, when things intrigue me, I will investigate or ask that obvious, perhaps even awkward, question; “so what?”  I break things down into their basic form to try and understand them; mostly so I can explain to others; be it my kids in my role as a parent, or the people I communicate with through my work. If I have to look too far to find a meaning or if I’m given a load of old twaddle as an answer then I will soon switch off. And that’s probably the same for most people.

It all starts with a ‘thing’

When I started clearing my drive of snow the other week there was not much happening in my head or in my street. It was sunny, the snow was deeper than usual, and it would probably take me an hour or so to clear the snow and young son might come out and help. I had no plans for the day other than a family walk and for once no pressing work that needed to be done at the weekend. ‘Thinking time’ I thought.

The wrong sort of sand

Background

When I was a child, me and my sister had a sand pit at the top of the garden. My dad made it, as he was handy that way. It was sunken, lined with plastic and edged with railway sleepers.  My sister didn’t really play in it so I assumed responsibility and claimed it as my territory cos boys do that apparently. I loved it. My favourite toys were diggers and trucks. My pride and joy was an 18 wheeler HGV. It had sliding doors and the cab even uncoupled from the load. Put them in the sand pit and that was me sorted, for the weekend and summer holidays.