I Really Must Get Out More!

Two Christmas events this week – two really thought-provoking messages.

I went up to the Lancaster University Management School’s annual party on Tuesday night. I like the people there – a lot of the academic focus within the North West in my two key disciplines – management science and the social sciences – has migrated there and the place goes from strength to strength.

The speaker was Wayne Hemmingway, who has been doing a lot more innovative design stuff than I realised in the growing number of years now since he completed his riches from rags sell out of the Red or Dead fashion brand. Sustainable, decent and affordable housing is his latest area of interest.

My key learning from his speech was actually a little bit of a stumble on his part. He was talking about what the original breakthrough into the fashion big time meant to him and his wife.

He started to say, “What it taught us was that there was a market gap………” – and you thought he was going to say “for our kind of work”, but after a moment’s hesitation, he said “for us”.

And I think I knew what he meant – and I like it. We spend so much time conforming to stereotypes of product values and the articulation of precisely prescribed unique selling points that I think we sometimes forget that the imprint we bring ourselves to our business offerings can be a key differentiator.

I’m not sure – because I’m not known in any event for shyness! – but hearing this may have inspired me already to just let me be myself a bit more, letting what I believe in mesh a little more firmly with what it is that I am promoting.

The second spur to thinking came today, at a lovely lunch hosted in Kendal by Cumbria Chamber of Commerce.
Guest speaker was Invest in Cumbria MD John Grainger, who spoke eloquently and movingly of the efforts to salvage as much as possible of Cockermouth’s town centre business, recently overwhelmed by floods. Barriers and cross-organisational boundaries have collapsed as a massive community effort has swept away problems and found rapid solutions in the wake of the receding waters.

It was a vivid testimony to what people can achieve, together, when you seek opportunity and pursue possibilities, instead of becoming hidebound with regulations and mired in self-set restrictions.

So, that’s two early Christmas and New Year messages I’ve picked up this week – don’t be afraid to let yourself be part of your proposition and never forget that people can do amazing things when they work together.

- Malcolm Evans is a founding partner of The Cultureship Practice, which researches corporate culture and implements organisational development strategies based on clearly embedded values and explicit business ethics.