Irish – it’s not a dead language after all…

Here’s a photo of my talented god-daughter Olivia with the medal she won a couple of weeks back for second place in the Irish poetry recitation at the Feis. Well done Olivia! You really are a superstar. 67 children entered this year – and as the poem was the same for all – and as most of their parents probably don’t even speak Irish themselves (according to Wikipedia, about 10% of the Northern Irish population has “some knowledge of Irish”), it must have been a bit of a trial for the audience to endure.

However, as we all know – and Olivia certainly – the pursuit of a medal is a worthwhile sport and you just have to do whatever you need to in order to get into the final 3!

Irish received official recognition in Northern Ireland for the first time in 1998 as a result of the Good Friday Agreement and these days about 4,000 kids start to learn every year as they go to secondary school. Where I live in Northern Ireland, there’s a rich wealth of Irish culture to embrace – so perhaps it isn’t a dying language after all…

Purple Haze…

Living in Northern Ireland, from time to time I come across someone that was at the legendary Jimi Hendrix gig in Belfast – and they always have a story to tell. That night, 27 November 1967, was Jimi’s 25^th birthday and the word on the street goes that a pretty girl from Bangor was selected by Jimi’s people to be his “companion” after the show.

Like most people, I don’t know a great deal about Jimi Hendrix beyond what everyone knows – Purple Haze & Voodoo Chile (popular tracks on the White Swan jukebox in Doncaster when I was at school), the fact that he died young and in London, that he was left-handed and that he played a famous gig at Woodstock.

A couple of years back when I was passing through Seattle, I visited the Music Hall of Fame – housed within a remarkable building created by the fabulous Frank Gehry. If truth be known, my real motive in going there was to inspect the vast collection of sci-fi memorabilia collected by “rich as Croesus” Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen. Impressive it was too – even including Captain Kirk’s Star Trek chair. But despite my science fiction interest, by far the most enjoyable hour I spent there was wandering through a collection of Jimi Hendrix articles – especially the postcards he sent to his father when he was in the army, his flamboyant 1960s clothes & psychedelic stage outfits displayed in glass cabinets, his famous guitars and most moving of all, the lyrics of some of his most famous songs scribbled on the reverse of restaurant menus or on hotel stationery.

Writing this today has got me thinking about the legacy that each of us leaves behind – what will yours be?

The truth about marketing…

With less than a week to go until Learning Pool’s annual conference & with no flights leaving Northern Ireland again this morning – oh and with the prospect of launching a new website next week – marketing is something that’s been in my mind – a lot – recently.

For small companies, there’s always a lot of anxiety around spending your limited amounts of cash on marketing. Everyone knows the old premise that 50% of marketing spend is effective, it’s just a shame that no-one knows which 50%…

At our HQ in Derry, we’re up to our eyes in balloons & conference giveaway bags & party planning so I think it’s wise to take 5 minutes out & reflect on the following excerpt from 37 Signals’ recent book “Rework”:

Marketing is not a department. Every time you answer the phone, send an email or someone uses your product – that’s marketing. Every word you write on your website is marketing. Every error message in your software is marketing. The checkout counter and every invoice you send is marketing.

Aah – I feel so much better now – it seems those conference giveaway bags aren’t so important after all…

Beckham in the making?

This is Gene McVeigh. He’s 6 years old and I’m very proud to say he’s my nephew. He’s a very keen footballer and today he started with Dungannon United youth team. Gene’s had a good first day and scored 3 goals. He’s Manchester United mad and his ambition is to one day be like David Beckham or Wayne Rooney. It’s nice to have ambition and it’s nice to have a nephew. Good luck Gene. I’ll look forward to the day that we look back on this blog when you’re a world famous footballer…

It’s amazing who you can meet in a lift…

Yep – it was Screamin’ Jay Hawkins himself that got into my lift in a Paris hotel late one night in the mid 90s. He’d been performing that night in the hotel. I’d watched from the back of the lobby having returned from a night on the town. He was an elderly man by then, certainly in his late sixties, but his performance was still surreal & a little bit spine chilling. Yeah – I know you’re wondering – and the answer is yes – he did have the skull on a stick with him, gripped firmly in his hand. I think he was taking it to bed with him…

Beauty is perhaps transient – but some things are indeed permanent

I’ve loved John Keats ever since I’ve been aware of his existence. When I was at school, to supplement the textbook we were given on Keats’ poetry, I bought myself a book full of his letters, many written to his true love & next door neighbour Fanny Brawne.

I enjoyed reading his poems, but it was the letters to Fanny and to his brother George in America that really caught my imagination.

Years later, I lingered in his house at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in Rome. He lived there with his friend the artist Joseph Severn in the latter days of his life, only 25 years old & dying from consumption. He could no longer go out, but observed life in Rome passing him by through the window by his bed that looks straight out onto the Steps.

How lucky we are to have language and writing to express ourselves to each other and how amazing is it that we have the legacy of those that have gone before us to read at our leisure.

Something you should never, ever do…

One of my all time pet hates is writing on the backs (or insides) of hands. No matter how desperate you are to write something down or remember something – never, ever, ever write it on your hand. It looks truly terrible & it portrays you as a disorganised individual with no awareness of or concern about your personal appearance.

Nearly as bad as the young man I interviewed for a sales job recently – on leaving our building he stood on top of the mail in our hallway instead of picking it up & handing it to me – he didn’t get the job & he’s probably still wondering why! This incident still makes our team laugh.

Little things really do matter.

Dr Dennis Kimbro & his views on recruitment

Talent management in local government (or the apparent lack of it and the complete disinterest there seems to be in it) is something I spend a lot of time thinking about & a bit of time talking about so I was very pleased to be able to see Dr Dennis Kimbro speak at the PPMA conference in London last week on the topic of Building Effective Leaders for the Future. Dr Kimbro is a lecturer in human potential & entrepreneurship at Clark Atlanta university and he writes books about notable achievers – talent recruitment, development & management is something he knows a thing or two about.

So here’s a brief summary of the main points I’ve taken away from his presentation.

In his research & interviews with 150+ notable African Americans, these are the 4 things that consistently make some people far more successful than most of us:

1. They dream big

2. They never listen to advice from friends & critics telling them the reasons why their idea will fail; they go with their own inner belief every time

3. They dedicate themselves to lifelong learning (see slide on the photo above re what happens to you if you don’t!)

4. They simply refuse to accept failure.

Food for thought indeed – I hope many of you see some of the above in yourselves.

He had advice for the rest of us mere mortals as well – mainly around how to recruit good people into our teams – and these are the things you should consider when appraising your interviewees and in this order of priority:

1. Do they have the right level of talent for the role? (education, intelligence, experience)

2. How well will they fit with your existing team?

3. Do they demonstrate the level of commitment to your team’s common purpose that you need?

And when you get them into the room – these are the 3 questions above all others that you should ask:

1. Why do you want to work in this organisation?

2. Tell me about yourself – what motivates you? – what are your talents, specialisms and areas of excellence?

3. If we don’t offer you this job and you go somewhere else, what are we going to miss?

If your candidate can’t articulate their answers to the above, then you have a problem and should probably carry on looking.

Dr Kimbro is a master of the business soundbite and here are a few of his priceless quotes:

· Work is not a job, it’s an opportunity

· The opposite of success is conformity

· We need to want to make a difference, with others that want to make a difference, doing something that matters (I like this one a lot! – applies to every startup I’ve ever worked in)

· Complacency is the first step to mediocrity

· Stop complaining & focusing on the mundane

· Monday should be a great day because you can’t wait to get to work!

Dennis talked for an hour & I thought he was inspirational and wonderful. I chatted to him afterwards & he was charming. However, in a room with over 200 local government HR specialists I seemed to be very much in the minority. Here’s some of what I heard later in the day from the HR professionals that are responsible for creating future managers and leaders for our councils:

· He should have tailored his talk to the UK public sector

· He was too passionate

· None of that applies to us, it’s for the private sector

· I’d heard it all before

C’mon guys – if you want local government to be a vibrant place for people, especially young people joining the job market, to want to come & work, things really have to change & fast. Dave Briggs and I while away the hours we spend on roadtrips playing a game called “If I were a local authority chief exec I would…” and it’s always, always about people – no matter how many times we revisit it.

Warfare on a Bean Bag

Continuing my theme of writing about interesting people that I meet when I’m out & about, a couple of weeks ago I met Ben who is 8 years old.

He’s very interested in warfare just now and he’s studiously working his way through a massive encyclopaedia all about wars – I think when I met him he’d just concluded the Boer War.

He told me a lot of things about trenches & spitfires & gas masks that I didn’t know about before but of most interest to me was this amazing “war field” that he’d built with toy soldiers on a bean bag – isn’t it incredible. Check out especially the tarpaulin hospital over to the right of the photo which is where injured infantrymen are taken.

Ben – if I was injured in an open war zone – that’s exactly where I’d like to go too!

Diet Coke and Alice Cooper in Palm Springs

This is a photo of my friend Barbara & me on our way to see Alice Cooper in Palm Springs, CA last Hallowe’en. That’s why we’re both wearing black.

The reason for it being so sunny at Hallowe’en is twofold. First of all, Californians go out & come home again early (unlike the Irish). Secondly, it’s always pretty sunny in the desert until it gets dark.

It was a great night – Alice sang all his hits and he got to play a few rounds of golf whilst he was there – so everyone won. The concert took place in the sports hall of a casino and to an outsider (i.e. a non American like me) it was utterly alien. I’m more used to going to see bands at the Academy in Brixton where you’re lucky if you get to the bar & back without someone pouring a pint (or worse) into your pocket. In California it was all no-smoking and diet coke. How very different.

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