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“The true business of people should be to go back to school,” wrote the great architect Buckminster Fuller, “and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

The irony is, that people need go about the business of learning, because things are changing:

1. In the future, people will have shorter and more careers, and they will do more part time work and volunteer work.
2. More people will work independently in small businesses where they contract out their services to larger organizations.
3. More workers, especially women, will work from their homes.

With the move toward more self-employment and more work from the home and away from the organization, comes more choice and more responsibility, for both worker and employer. Individuals will have more freedom to shape work to fit the way they want to live instead of fitting life into a work schedule.

But they also will have the freedom to do poor quality work, by cheating or by laziness. The organization will have more flexibility but can abuse that flexibility by exploiting the outsider, tightening its conditions, and reducing the rewards. How important it will be that employees and employers can engage in trust confidence, finding ways and means to  talk.

I expect I will also have to work longer; the social philosopher Charles Handy explained we are likely to have three phases of work life:
1. Our main career, where we make our money (I am grateful to have been a CEO)
2. Our passion career, were we enjoy our work (I love teaching and coaching)
3. Our retirement supplement work (our pensions simply won’t be big enough to support our long lives).

I am hoping the Community Hub will help me explores the way in which the world of work is changing and what the thoughtful individual’s choices and responsibilities should be. I a looking forward to having ‘Good Conversations’.

So said Colonel Hathi (of Jungle Book fame) ….on the march with his community or herd …….It has been a joy to observe over the last few months, the community program has begun to become established, in particular there are now four ‘Peer Support Groups’ running whereby women, particularly those who are having to keep a family and a job, career or business running, come together in facilitated group to lead and support each other.

What I have witnessed is groups of individuals, often temporarily lacking in confidence or skills sharing what they know and feel, in a calm and gentle manner and in the process developing personal resilience for the future. The striking personal realisation has been how a sense of interdependence in the group leads to greater sense of independence and confidence outside of it.

That is of particular interest to me, being engaged in action research on how the simple and practical Human Given’s (HG) approach (See http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellor-articles/what-are-the-human-givens) to leading a calm life, getting clear thinking and developing new skills.

The peer support group meets a number of human needs identified by the HG approach; for belonging to community, for status and to be able to give and receive attention. And more! As the group develops it also begins to provide a secure and safe base, which for some of us that may have felt lonely or vulnerable, can make a big difference to how confidently we can approach life’s challenges, with more resilience.

The groups also provide an opportunity for the participants to demonstrate and hone some of their key resources. I particularly enjoy watching them use their imaginations in telling, re-framing and re-telling their stories. It never ceases to amaze me that calmness and emotional health improves as we each learn to tell ourselves an empowering narrative (whatever you do don’t listen to anyone who tells you everything is doom and gloom, or you are rubbish – they will put you under a gloomy, disempowering spell!)

And this story continues to unfold in an empowering way too. Like the neural brain connections that form and create our new learning, the individual peer groups will come together to create a larger hub. This will deepen and widen the network of collaboration, which on the same day will also host commerce focused events, as well as provide other opportunities for us all to come together, because People and Business Matters – which reminds me, I recall establishing something similar in the businesses I used to run; Communities of Practice we called them. It sounds like a good theme for the hub day.

http://www.meetup.com/North-East-Herts-Community-Business-Colloboration/events/231886009/

My simple belief, as an ‘Anarchist in Truth’ as I term it, is that each of us deserves to have personal democracy, that being the right to make good choices for ourselves, in essence to be free. With that comes responsibility which, as I was taught it, is to ‘take care of yourself and your family, create a surplus and support the vulnerable; be ready to sacrifice and go to war if you must’.

I won’t wax lyrical about who taught me that or that he (my Dad) fought long and hard as a Socialist against the 1980’s seemingly Thatcherite approach of the ‘individual before all things’ – I actually believe that Maggie naively trusted the human response to having ‘more than enough’ to be the cascading down through family and others of profit into a fairer society – which sadly did not work.

Why? Maybe because ‘Big Government’ had and has set itself up as a big shop, with lots of free, but basic brand goods, that may have stuffed the ‘striving for my family’ out of some of us and certainly seems to have stuffed society.

In my simple view, without a cohesive family unit (to be politically correct) of two adults and a child(ren) the idea of ‘profit’ cascading into society stumbles. Maybe those that are ‘stuffed’ don’t know about their obligation or maybe they don’t care. Families can end up fatherless, mothers can end up run ragged and some fathers can end traumatised.

However, I personally prefer the focus on family over both ‘individualism’ (Tory Righto’s) and Big Government (Labour Lefties). And therefore I care. Given that we can’t be all things to all people, we can only make sensible steps, and we in the Just Clarity Group Social Enterprise focus on what we can do in manageable chunks, for those that are struggling. In the main that is single mums whom we counsel, coach, peer support and help build their careers or businesses. In many ways we act as the stabilising, father-like force.

Sometimes we help the challenged Fathers (through PTSD Resolution) recover their responsible behaviour and sometimes we help the children (say through Transitions-RTC) to overcome addictions, and because we are a community of volunteers we might be said to have created a small ‘social family’ of “Sisters and Brothers!”.

I like that idea because each of us deserves the support of our community to help us achieve our potential, to be able to work with our passion and to lead calm, balanced family lives (in Catholic Social teaching that is called ‘Human Dignity’).

It is from that calm place that individuals can make better decisions (personal democracy) and maybe volunteer to take on responsibility for meeting more of their local community’s needs, ‘Combing Individuals’ and taking social services back from ‘Big Government’ – subsidiarity that is called! I think an association like Links4Growth has the potential to be an organising force for that subsidiarity energy.

It could even then move on and focus on bringing families together and sustaining them through the many challenges and changes that families (and their societies go through). This would be good for Just Clarity Group, who stand ready to build on to supporting families too through its ‘People and Business Matters’ program. An organising force needs People and Businesses to organise for! How would it be to able to contribute and  profit from many small families, collaborating together and that are part of a bigger tribe? It’s been done before!

As for profit? For this I will be held accountable for the performance of Just Clarity Group by our Chairman. I will talk about income, costs, profits and cash, but he will be equally interested in the Social Capital we have generated; happier, confident working mums, spending time with their contented children. We can give back by measuring our social profit rather than just the £.

Valley of the Gods, Utah

Becoming better, then good, then even better and finally a master of ourselves. Would it not be good to have appreciation whilst we are in the process of becoming a master?

When we master something we find that we can do it ‘with ease’. Of course! But do you know what I have learned? Sometimes it takes hard work, patience and a long time, during which seemingly it feels like I am making no progress at all! My Dad called that the ‘plateau’. Some might think that means there is no more progress to be made, but that is not true. It’s a time to strive.

I once dreamt that I was driving a rickety old train along a track towards an exciting vibrant city that I could see way off in the distance, in front of me, over a bridge that crossed a shimmering large body of water. I was excited, but filled with anticipation which was almost nervousness like (have you noticed how hard it is to distinguish the sensations of excitement from anxiety?) Behind, a fast modern train was bearing down on me at speed! Fortunately, just before the crash came, my train veered to the left letting ‘Speedy’ plough on by.

I found myself trunddleing on a circular track, around and around an orchard of fruit. The pace was slow enough for me to able to get off the train, stretch my legs and reach up to gather all kinds of delightful fruit. There was also a compost bin in which I could put all of the no longer needed items, littering the train from my previous (what now felt like a long and arduous) journey. It took me a short while to recognise I was gathering and replenishing my resources for the next stage. ‘The plateau’ I heard my Dads voice laughing and saw his nodding head ‘you are on the plateau!’

That encouraging nod was enough for me to feel that I was on the right track and although I never dreamt it, I was left assured that I would reach my goal.

Far too often that internal nodding voice is a critical one. Some left of remnant of a bye gone era that play tonelessly and annoyingly yet incessantly insistently. A judge some say it is called. A judge which some of us allow to intervene in the normal unfolding of our everyday life. Yet, if you are to before a proper judge, you will be treated fairly and have representation, an advocate to make your case. I bet many of us forget that part.

The reality is, we can and should expect from those around us supportive community encouragement. They can be our advocates, for example, with a smile for when we atempt something, make a stab or approximate how to approach the task. An encouraging nod when we fall just a little short, just before adjusting ready for our next attempt (The Royal Artillery use such a process to target their guns) and a clap on the back when we do try again.

We should also expect the community to be patiently encouraging whilst we are on the plateau harvesting, honing and testing our gifts, strengths and talents. Mastery? It’s all in the preparation. Who makes your case?

When I first came into business, during the early 1980’s, my main objective was simply to make profits. As time and I have progressed businesses have become more concerned with their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), meaning that they take more (possibly equal account) of the impact they have on their stakeholders and on the ecology.

Their stakeholders include, naturally the business owners, their staff, customers and indeed anybody who is impacted on by their corporate activities – in fact all people. The ecology is of course the planet.

The accountant in me gets excited when I hear this new approach describe as the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ focusing on the three P’s of:

• Profit (generating not just financial capital but social capital too)
• People (being how we work with and encourage our community)
• Planet (how this generation gets its needs met without compromising the meeting of the needs of the future)

In response, what now seems to be unfolding in the business world (that is distinct from the state activities of ‘Big Government’ and philanthropic work of ‘Charities’) are a split two forms of Enterprise:

1. Commercial Enterprise, the traditional organisations created out of self-focused desire for private gain and
2. Social Enterprise, created out of a collective desire to create social value in a purposeful way.

To be clear, the ‘selfish-gene’ commercial profit maximising approach is as an innately human trait as the willingness to co-operate and be in community, and whilst the two perspectives need not be in conflict, there is and will likely continue to be a tension between them.

Commercial Enterprises want maximum profits, but need the goodwill of people to create it. Social Enterprises want to create social value, but need profits to pay for it. It is simply a question of the degree to which each enterprises focuses its mission on.

Both resonate with me and my associates (Just Clarity Group) and our mantra and program that we run, that ‘People & Business Matters’, a Social Enterprise program.

Our collective ambition is not to compete with Commercial Enterprise by being cheaper because we are volunteers and have a low cost base. Nor do we wish to take resources, like good staff or grants from commercial enterprises. What we aim to do is focus on solving a social need and then making available good, value for money resources to our local Commercial Enterprises for further social value creation.

We do this by coaching, mentoring, training and developing those in our local community who might feel marginalised or challenged in finding work, building a career or starting a business. Our goal is to provide local employers with good quality employees. In the process of doing that we re-invest surplus profits back into our programs. In our efforts we able to give, simply for the sake of giving.

We feel that that is a ‘Win-Win-Win’.

After many years leading businesses, managing finances, teaching and coaching people it has slowly dawned on me that relationships are important.

When times have been hard (have you noticed that business and life can sometimes be like that?), it has been the people of good heart, honest intention and generous spirit who have sustained me. I am fortunate to have found (or attracted) a good cohort of confidents into a community of practice, be it life or work. We talk, collaborate and move forward together, in fact we build collective resilience, which for me is about our ability to withstand life’s challenges.

This approach is coherent with my philosophy to life, which is beautifully and simply captured in the organizing principles of the Human Givens (www.positiveways.co.uk/about/9/about-human-givens) that all of us have needs that when met lead to a fulfilled and contented life. These needs include; having connection to others, being able to give and receive attention and to feel that we can contribute to our society.

My experience is that when these simple building blocks are nurtured and developed, each of us can enhance our individual resilience, which in turn, through the principle of ‘pass it on’ enables community resilience. The stronger each of us are the stronger we all are. Regardless of the colour of our Government or whether we are ‘In or out’ of Europe, the local community can and should flex its local influence and be good to and for each other.

But for our local community to be strong, we all need a means (we know we have a need!) to communicate. Life is easier when we talk, which is why Positive Ways encourages and creates opportunities for individuals to have to hold ‘Good Conversations’ through local peer support groups. These groups provide a means for individuals to develop and share their skills and resources.

However, that often requires the individual team to be able to trust each other. Whilst Positive Ways finds that it can facilitate the team to come together quickly, it also acknowledges that some people like to have built relationships more steadily. A great way to do that is to meet up and have a coffee (and a ‘good conversation’) together. The Links4growth (http://link4growth.biz/l4g) captures all the sensible values of being in community whilst providing a gentle means for individuals to meet up.

Why not hold a good conversation, if not today, soon?