Steve’s List:

1. Work hard and be nice to people (two things but inseparable)
2. Do my tax return
3. Trust my instincts
4. Accept criticism gracefully
5. Read a little every day
6. Walk the dog
7. Daydream often; procrastinate less
8. Make more 3-minute phone calls
9. Convert the garage into a workspace
10. Share (especially via Instagram)
11. Eat more fruit bananas
12. Collaborate with others to bring @hardlynormal over to the UK
13. Make people laugh
14. Make my family proud
15. Post here more regularly, as I promised I would
16. Keep Friday evenings special – i.e. film night with @gicela
17. Build more bridges
18. Understand what my daughters need from me (besides extra pocket money)
19. Be there for my dad as he starts his fight against prostate cancer
20. Help charities get to where they need to get to quicker
21. Work hard and be nice to people

* It has been a fortnight of mud and rainbows; of roast turkey and cider. Most of all, mud. In the few months since we’ve become dog owners - pinch me; how did this happen - I’ve grown to cherish our daily walks in the waterlogged fields down the lane that runs behind our little house. When the girls are off school this is something we do together as a family. We slop and squelch about on the Moors, where the grazing marsh is criss-crossed by an interconnecting network of ditches (known locally as rhynes) which in mid-winter drain the floodwater from the fields.

Whatever your goals and dreams, and wherever you may be on that journey, I hope that some of them come true in 2012.

Update: Soon after I hit ‘publish’, I stumbled upon Taking 18 Minutes Day Towards A Year-Long Focus, which Beth also posted today. It really resonated with me, as I have also decided to focus on a handful of themes this year. I didn’t include them in My List; they merit posts of their own, so watch this space.

On a good day the high speed rail journey from my home village in Somerset to London lasts two hours and four minutes. If I get a window seat on the left hand side, just after half way there’s a glimpse of a spinney (as we say in my neck of the woods) marooned in a field. Last Thursday the clouds moved majestically across the sky and danced with those trees.

This weekend, downpours have come to a colourful end with spectacular rainbows. For me, these last days of summer bring with them a couple of exciting new projects. I’m ready.

I have decamped from a week with the family under canvas with enough memories to fill a year with daydreams. Luminous blue sea; low and empty sandy beaches; seagulls and fish and chips. Thank you, Cornwall; my vision has been swept clear and bright by the Atlantic breeze and there is much work to be done.

You know when a number of things align so completely you want to capture the moment for all time? These ‘moments’ cannot be anticipated or planned for, and the sheer joy of them is hard to put into words, but may last a lifetime. The emotion cannot be manufactured; I simply fall into the rhythm as the moment unfolds. It’s when I feel most alive.

If I close my eyes; think harder… a few more memories surface and slowly reveal themselves; like polaroids. Very small moments in my life; that enthralled. Often there’s a soundtrack, like C’est le Bon, which instantly transports me back to a cornfield during the summer of 1983.

Which brings me to yesterday evening. Who would have thought that wolfing down some fish and chips on the seafront in Clevedon with my family would hit such a high note. Just in case, I’m bookmarking it with this post… much as a reader might lovingly turn down a page to mark a favourite passage.

In my talk I said we had designed our organisations for divisions, rather than for connections. Think about it; not only have we built silos, but we still call them ‘divisions’. I also repeated a line from my post last month:

Loyalty to a charity brand is being slowly augmented by a closer affinity with charity employees.

I’ve observed how it helps to develop the thread between a charity’s values and my own experience of that organisation – as I learn a little more about the individual daily contribution of those charity people I follow on Twitter (and who I might then meet). These ‘weak ties’ become stronger over time – more textured – and many eventually form bridges that connect us. But as Anne McCrossan (with whom I am fortunate enough to collaborate) writes in her post reflecting on this week’s event, charity leaders have been slow to appreciate how this connective tissue can create a compelling point of difference:

Job descriptions remain fixed, corporate reputations struggle with how to accommodate and integrate personal profiles into their own, the scope to build on the kind of affinity that can reshape organisational structure so it’s more fluid is limited. Hopping over the walls of internal departments to contribute to initiatives is often regarded as too provocative and challenging to the status quo.

Zappos – the online shoe and apparel store – expects each employee to “develop and cultivate the brand,” and shy away from any formal written guidelines, since their CEO, Tony Hsieh believes these are “too limiting and not aspirational enough.” We need to convince people that what they are doing has value. Of course some people – like Euan Semple – appreciated all this a long time before I did.

HCL Technologies in India has created the employee passion indicator – an instrument to establish what employees get most excited about. It might be financial reward (for less than half), recognition, advocacy, and so forth. Each employee gets a ‘traffic lights’ report indicating green, orange or red for the ‘fit’ between their own motivational factors and the requirements of their role. This helps them and the company to find the best match.

At Foviance, my friend Richard Sedley had the idea of sharing the business ‘lifestream’ on a blog. Elsewhere, SAY Media use employees’ images of their extra-curricular passions to start a conversation. I love what ihmmedia have done here on their ‘people’ page (thanks to @RobmDyson for this one), and I smiled with Heather Taylor as she shared her excitement at receiving her BBC staff pass.

So far these examples are all from the corporate world (but you get the idea).

Here come charity:water (who else?) to the rescue. They ’big up’ their people (including interns) via a meet the staff category on their blog, and use photos to capture the heartbeat of their young and dynamic organisation – such as when sharing the delight of receiving a poem or a visit from a young fundraiser in the office.

One last one. Now I have no idea whether the stunning new visual identity of the MIT Media Lab carries over into practice, but the intent is breathtaking (you really need to follow that link). Translate this to your charity: passionate and creative people from all kinds of backgrounds coming together, inspiring each other and collaboratively making change. Now imagine that branding extending out to those not on the payroll.

All this goes way beyond ‘employee engagement’; I’m thinking more ‘employee emancipation’.

What do you think?

I’m now about to jump on another train to try and persuade a group of Big Charity Finance Directors that this is something worth focusing on; that there is value in the ‘who’, as well as the ‘what’.

Anyway, here’s my presentation from Monday.

I recommend a week in Valencia in late May. Enough of the jacarandas are still in bloom, yet many of the trumpet-shaped flowers have fallen to form vivid lilac-blue carpets of blossom.

I’ve just returned from a stupendous week in the English Lake District. Very intermittent signal, so plenty of time for family, walking, and thinking.

I have promised myself that I will post more regularly here from the beginning of May.

Here’s a link to the photo set on Flickr.

I went for a brief walk in Clifton on Saturday afternoon. You can view the slideshow on Flickr.

Very seasonable, I thought! Also, my most ‘interesting’ photo on Flickr, according to Flickreenos, with just shy of 10,000 views.

Top row, left to right Porthcurno beach, Mousehole harbour, Rockpool play at Sennen Cove,
Middle row Sennen Cove surf, Logan Rock from Pednvounder, Looking towards the Minack Theatre,
Bottom row Pednvounder beach, Atlantic shower, Window onto the Atlantic