The Year in Review

2016 feels to have been quite a momentous year. I won't re-visit the large political events here; but at a local level it has been very positive.

Finishing and publishing Shifting Stories released a lot of energy for new learning: I also completed my post-graduate diploma in Executive Coaching and Mentoring, trained with Nancy Kline on her Thinking Partnerships programme, and organised the training for a number of colleagues and qualified in the Hogan assessment tools.  I have blogged variously about these throughout the year, so will not say more about them here, except to say that they have all added considerably to my repertoire as a coach, facilitator and consultant; and I have more development planned for next year (not least more work with Nancy Kline, and a Post-graduate Coaching Supervision diploma). 

I also read a large number of really helpful books, and have bought many more to keep me stimulated an learning, as well as attended a number of very valuable cpd events with Cumbria Coaching Network and the EMCC.

On the professional front, it has been gratifying to see a number of my coaching clients achieve great things, survive tough times, inspire others...  and many of the training events and awaydays I have facilitated have elicited similar feedback.  Moreover, the client base is growing, and the diary for 2017 is already very strong indeed.

Likewise, it has been particularly nice to read positive reviews of the book (both on Amazon, and also, somewhat less credibly, here); but even more pleasing to read reports of people putting the ideas into practice, with positive results (see here).

On the domestic front, we had a lovely holiday with our Outlaws (our daughter's husband's parents) sailing around Corfu on a catamaran; as well as a lovely family holiday in Scotland. And of course the major event of the year was the birth of our first grandson, James, who is with us for Christmas and the New Year.

And I notice that it is almost exactly a year since someone pointed out Charity Miles to me. I thought I might raise $250 for Charity Water over the year, just by my normal walking and running habits. In fact it has been more than $300, which is very satisfying. I started doing Donate a Photo more recently, but have contributed $190 worth of photos to Operation Smile. We have also developed substantial Kiva portfolios for the children; giving them Kiva vouchers as presents at Christmas etc. (If you don't know about Kiva, take a look - a fabulous scheme to help those in the developing world with micro-loans: encouraging agency, respecting dignity...)

All in all, despite the turmoil in the larger world, a positive year for us here...

So may I take this opportunity to wish all my clients, collaborators, colleagues and friends every blessing for a happy and successful 2017.

Shifting Stories

After a long gestation,  Shifting Stories (by Andrew Scott, ISBN 9781785893551) is now available to order from your local bookshop, on Amazon (also as an ebook, but without the wonderful graphics), and directly from me (If you would like a signed copy) via the website (see below)

I would ask that you consider buying from your local bookshop, rather than Amazon, for a few reasons: bookshops struggle for business, but we would miss them if they disappeared - and they pay a much better margin to authors than Amazon does (so this is also a self-interested request!)  

If you want to know more about the book, there are a few Youtube videos (between 4 and 6 minutes long), and a lot more detail on the  website.

The Youtube videos are 

• a (mock)TV interview, here: 

• a (mock) radio interview here: 

• and a presentation including a case study here (this was produced as a reminder video for people who have been on my workshop):

The website is at www.shiftingstories.uk  

If you like the book, please tell everyone, and write a glowing review on Amazon.

If you dislike the book, please tell me, and tell me why.

If you want to discuss anything in the book, please go to the website (www.shiftingstories.uk)  where I hope lively discussion will take place, to develop my own understanding, and other peoples’ too.

I hope you buy the book, enjoy it, and find it useful; but above all I hope that you engage in the discussion. I think this is a fascinating approach, and am keen to learn more - and hope that you will be part of that process.

I would like to record particular thanks to the many people interviewed for the book, all those years ago (you should have received your complimentary copy a while back: if it did not reach you, please let me know.) And especial thanks to Andrew Derrington, who coached me into writing a readable book, Mike P-S who did the cover and all the graphic work, and Jane P-S who did all the practical editorial work, and built the website.

Shifting Stories

This week I have sent the final proofs of the book to the publisher. That follows several weeks of proofreading, amending, re-proofing, catching a few more errors or infelicities and amending, re-proofing. And then a catastrophic computer failure (the screen dying) on the part of Jane’s Mac, on which the book was. Fortunately we had an up-to-date backup, so were able  to buy a new machine and rescue it. 

In celebration of finally sending it to the publisher, and also because I was running a workshop on Shifting Stories for leaders at Sunderland University, I launched a Twitter account for the book: @ShiftingStories.

The idea is to start the process of engaging people in conversation about the ideas in the book, signpost the new website (to follow) where I hope more extensive conversation will take place, and, of course, prompt people to buy the book when it is published.

So if anyone has any expertise on growing a Twitter account, I'd be most interested!

I also had the good fortune, this week, to learn from Mark Reed how he has been successfully marketing his excellent book: The Research Impact Handbook . This is selling extremely well, and he kindly shared his marketing strategy with me. The first thing to say is that Mark’s book looks excellent: I have only had time to dip into a borrowed copy so far, but that was enough to convince me to buy it.  But there is no doubt that one of the other reasons it is selling well, is that Mark has given serious thought to his marketing strategy, and I look forward to learning more from him.

I also announced the other week that I had seen Mike’s latest design for the cover of Shifting Stories, and this seems like a good time to post that to this blog: so here it is.

I am also toying with writing a short book on one particular story and how it may be shifted. I imagine calling this one: One Day They'll Find Out: Imposter Syndrome and Other Stories.  I would be very interested to know if anyone would find that a good topic. One option would be to make it available as a free .pdf book, as a trailer or taster for Shifting Stories. But as I say, that is still at the 'toying with the idea' phase.

That Book

The book is practically finished: ie it is now proof-read, and indexed. We are just awaiting the final graphics.

The cover may (will not - see Update below)  be based on either of these:

The publication date is 28th October of this year, and the publisher is Matador. The isbn will be 9781785893551, though I don't think that will do much for you yet... Fear not, I will be reminding everyone as soon as the book is actually available.

To help you while away the idle hours until you can get your hands on a copy, here is a link to the radio interview I did about the book with Karen Ainley, as part of the recent media training we were running together, about which I blogged here.

You may also choose to attend this years University Forum for Human Resource Development Conference at which I will be speaking about the ideas in the book on 8 June (15.40 in the Coaching stream).


UPDATE

The cover has been revealed (to me) and is much better than these early ideas! But I think I'll keep it under wraps for a little longer...)

Clean Coaching

Today's CPD event at Cumbria Coaching Network was a session on Clean Coaching by Sioe Lan Tjao. I had come across clean questions many years ago when I did some NLP training, but either they weren't well explained, or I failed to understand the underpinning ideas.

And in my subsequent disillusionment with NLP, I approached today's session with some scepticism. It all seemed very interesting, and at one level, quite sensible: if as a coach one avoids introducing one's own stuff into the conversation, one is likely to be able to help the client to pursue his or her thinking further, without distractions. 

However, the particular questions suggested (there is a bank of twelve of them) didn't seem to me to be the only way to do this, and indeed I found it hard to understand why they had been chosen.  I suspect it was limitations of time, and the challenge of trying to cover a lot, and include some experiential work, that meant we didn't cover as much as Sioe Lan had hoped.

However, in getting home and following some of the links that she pointed to, I realised that the background to Clean Questions was an assumption, founded on the work of David Grove, about clients' use of metaphor, and the value of exploring that.

And as I read this explanation by Lawley and Tompkins, pursuing my curiosity about metaphor, I found something very interesting. The final example given, From Bombs to Batons, was remarkably similar, in effect, to the work on Story that I have been developing. That is, where I would see myself as helping a client to discover and strengthen a more helpful story, Lawley and Tompkins would see themselves as helping their client to change his or her metaphor.

That may sound like a very slim distinction; and indeed it is. But what I find fascinating is that although we are seeking to do essentially the same thing, the way in which we reached that point is very different; and so is the process we use to help the client. Which is just as well, or the book I've just finished writing would have been a complete waste of time.

Part of me is sorry that I had not come across their work before finishing mine; but part of me is very grateful indeed! It has already taken quite long enough, and there is plenty of scope for taking my thinking further, beyond the book.

The Story of the Unfinished Business...

At a supervision meeting of volunteers I work with, the issue of Unfinished Business was raised. One of the least satisfying parts of our work is that we often never hear the end of our clients' stories. When they are no longer in crisis and no longer need support, our involvement can end. That can be very unsatisfying, and sometimes unsettling: we know we left them on an upwards trajectory, but rarely is everything sorted and perfect.

That issue of unfinished business reminded me of a story a friend told me over dinner a week or so previously. He had suffered from adult-onset epilepsy. The medication he was given had an unfortunate side-effect. He started to suffer from troubling flashbacks/daydreams. These were all of a similar nature. He would remember some past encounter, of a trivial nature, with someone whom he had only met once, when the encounter had ended unsatisfactorily from his point of view. Many of these dated back years, and he had not consciously thought about them since.

One example was a time he had been stopped by traffic police and one of them had been unnecessarily sarcastic, some twenty years ago. But what troubled him was that each flashback ended with an imagined scene in which he beat up the other person. Needless to say, he is not given to violence, nor even to violent fantasies. So he found these flashbacks/daydreams very troubling, and at one stage was having several a day.

He went for a couple of counselling sessions, and his counsellor suggested a very simple idea. He should re-visit each of these encounters in his mind, and re-write the story by imagining an ending with which he would have been satisfied. So in the case of the police, for example, he imagined that he had had a word with the non-sarcastic police officer about the other's behaviour. He further imagined that the non-sarcastic officer had returned to the patrol car and given his colleague some uncompromising feedback about his sarcastic behaviour.

As he was telling me this part of the story his wife chipped in, to say that she had been extremely sceptical of this idea when he returned from that counselling session. It sounded too easy, too simple, to be effective. Yet effective it was!

From the moment he imagined a better ending to each of these stories, which I suppose must have been lurking unresolved deep in his unconscious mind for years, the flashbacks stopped. 

Just when I thought I had completed my book on Story, too...

Emotions, Thoughts and Meditation

I am a fan of Goleman's work on Emotional Intelligence, and particularly as applied to Leadership (see The New Leaders).

One of the many reasons it appeals to me, is that it starts with the self. Rather than describe what a leader should do or say to others, in order to lead, it starts with the leader increasing his or her self-awareness: noticing, and then learning to regulate, what is going on for oneself emotionally.

However, recently I was talking with a leader I know. He is, I think, a good leader and manages his emotions effectively most of the time, which also enables him to lead others well, in the way Goleman et al suggest. However, he was telling me of a recent occasion when he 'lost his rag' in a senior meeting.  

The occasion was relatively trivial: and indeed that was what infuriated him. Senior people seemed to him to be squabbling about something of little or no consequence. It was silly and it was a waste of time, in a meeting when there was much serious work to be done.

All of which prompted me to think that it is not sufficient to notice and regulate one's emotional responses, important though that may be. Under pressure (or for other less obvious reasons, in this case probably a combination of overwork, exhaustion and exasperation) the emotions may leak out and one may lose one's rag.

So there is a prior discipline: of considering how we are making sense of the world, and doing so in a way that does not lead to us having to manage sudden emotional responses. There are many approaches to this, including CBT based approaches, for example, and my work on Story (did I mention, I have finished the book - there is just a little editing to be done now...?). So as well as the emotional component, we have to attend to the rational. But the other component, I think, is the spiritual: the cultivation of serenity, through a spiritual discipline to match the intellectual and emotional disciplines. 

That, I think, is what meditation has to offer, and why it is being rediscovered as an important part of the repertoire for those seeking to be truly effective. I have blogged before about my own developing discipline, here. I was reminded of the impact that this practice is having once again, when a couple of fairly major issues popped out of the woodwork, and I found that I was not only able to cope with them calmly, but also to feel calm throughout - which meant there was no danger of inadvertent leakage of inner turmoil.

Meditation is one of those things for which we feel we never have time: after all, it feels as though we are doing nothing - a terrible waste of time! But increasingly, I am convinced that investing time in meditating (a little, regularly) is saving me huge amounts of both time and energy.

An Eventful Summer

In my last blog post I announced that we were getting connected to superfast broadband on 17 August.  Naively, perhaps, I thought that was true, as that is what our new provider had promised.  However, on getting back from a glorious week in Wales, I found that the router had not arrived, and that prompted me to ring the ISP - and sure enough, someone had forgotten to do something or other, and we were not, in fact, scheduled to be connected that day after all. They were terribly apologetic, but the soonest they could re-schedule for was 3 September. Clearly, that is a much worse time for me; I had chosen mid-August as the quietest time for the business: inSeptember, things start to get busy again.

And sure enough, the engineer turned up on the 3rd, did something at the box in the village, plugged in the new router, and told us the internet should be live in half an hour - but officially he was only meant to promise it by the end of the day.

By the end of the day, it still wasn't live: and given we don't get 3G here, I was effectively isolated from email, Skype and all the other online tools of my trade.  Cue angry phone call first thing this morning. And guess what, someone had forgotten to do something, a switch was thrown and we were online.

So an unpromising start with the new ISP - but I have to admit the internet is a lot faster now, so maybe it's worth it.

Not our car, but represents how I feel about it...

Other events over the summer include the timing belt on the car snapping long before it should have done, and trashing the engine - so a negotiation with Nissan about their meeting the cost of that. They wanted to local Nissan dealer to have a look inside, but unfortunately, the dealership managed to drop the car off the back of their truck and write it  off (along with two other vehicles on their forecourt). Fortunately nobody was hurt. So a further negotiation about that, as their insurers wanted to value the car as having no engine, whereas I felt that was unreasonable. And of course we had to find a replacement car.

On top of which, Mike managed both to lose his wallet and fail his driving test (by an very unlucky major...), so has had to re-book just as he is leaving for University; Clare got a new job and is moving out to live in Manchester, and needed to buy a car for that (with parental help, of course); and so on... Also, we were asked to have a Spanish student to stay, as she is working on her English. She was a delightful guest, and gave us the excuse to do a lot of walking, castle-visiting, boating and so on.

I'm also continuing to work on my ILM Coaching programme, which although I started somewhat grudgingly, is (of course) proving very worth while.

Nonetheless, my restful break and the time set aside to finish the book all felt somewhat eroded. However, I have managed to keep calm in the midst of these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (aka first world problems) and  I am still determined to finish the book this year and get it published asap - and am doing the final editing at present, while I await the graphics I have commissioned...

Naming the Book

As anyone who has anything to do with me has probably heard by now, I am currently writing a book. In fact, I have finished writing it and am busy editing it at the moment.

One of the problems with which I have been wrestling is the title, as I recount here.

The original working title was: Freeing People to Perform - How changing their stories can transform people. However, over time I grew less convinced that was the right title, and then had the idea of calling it Twice Upon a Time: The Art of Multistory Development; after some reflection and discussion, that developed into  Twice Upon A Time: How Multistory Development can improve organisational performance.

My concern about that title, which I still quite like, is that Twice Upon a Time has been used a lot. There is a book, a series of books, a single, a film... 

So I have been continuing to mull this over, and today came up with the idea of Shifting Stories. That appeals for a number of reasons. In the first place, it retains the idea that what the book is about is changing the stories we or others have; it also has a nice resonance (cf shifting sands) implying that our stories about reality are not immutable.  As far as I can see, it is only used once elsewhere, as the title of a rather esoteric book about history, gossip, and lore from Tang Dynasty Gossip China, so the risk of confusion is minimal. And if you are interested in stories from the Tang Dynasty, and how they have developed, I am sure Sarah Allen's book is the book for you.

So at present, I am quite keen to go with Shifting Stories. Which raises the question of a subtitle.

The options I am currently considering include:

Shifting Stories: How changing their stories can transform people.
Shifting Stories: How changing their stories can free people to perform
Shifting Stories: How Multistory Development can improve organisational performance.

Which leads to another problem. I have described the approach I explore as a multistory approach, and talk about multistory development. I quite like those labels, as they accurately encapsulate the central idea: that there are many stories available to us about any given reality; and that developing alternative stories is often very helpful.  But some people have said that the image of concrete carparks is a distraction to them.  So I have experimented with other descriptions, most recently the ManyStory approach.  But they don't feel as comfortable to me, so I am minded to go back to multistory.

So this post is really a request for feedback on any of these: let me know your views either via comments, on twitter, or by email. I will be most grateful.

A Rare Public Appearance...

Due to the nature of my business, most of my work is commissioned by corporate or institutional clients: which means that unless you are employed by the relevant  one of them, you will not be able to attend my workshops or programmes.

However, due to popular demand (hem hem) and coincidentally around the time I am gearing up to launch my book on an unsuspecting world, I am making a rare public appearance, to which all (and indeed sundry) are invited.

This will be at the ChangeCamp in Gosforth, on Saturday 28th March.  For full details of Change Camp, visit their site.

My session will be on Stories for Change. We will explore the model I have developed and describe in my book, in the context of coaching, with a short case study on video. Then participants will have the opportunity to apply the model in practice in pairs: one coaching, the other being coached.  We will then review their experience and seek to draw some conclusions.  Finally we will discuss different applications for the model.


It will be a stimulating and highly practical session, so do come along. At £25 (or £10 for concessions) it is a real bargain - and that includes several other sessions of your choice through the day, as well as excellent networking.

I look forward to seeing many friends, old and new, on the day.

Learning to Write (cont...)

One of the things that Andrew Derrington has been coaching me about is the use of the assert-justify structure in my writing, rather than argue-conclude.

He found a classic example in one of my chapters he was reviewing the other week: 'You start here saying what's wrong, and then, where is it, four, five, six (!) paragraphs later you say what should be done instead! Don't do that!'

I think he is right about this, in the type of book I am writing. However, where I think he is wrong is in his (I suspect somewhat tongue-in-cheek) next comment. 'You're humanities, aren't you: I think humanities people write like that because they have nothing to say!'

I think I write like that because so much of what I read is written like that. After all, it is how novels and drama work. They set up the suspense precisely by delaying explanation and dénouement. It provides narrative drive. 

All of which reminded me of a wonderful speech in Tom Stoppard's play Hapgood (Stoppard, of course, is a master-craftsman as a writer). The speaker, Kerner, is a Russian physicist, who has defected, and got tangled up in the spy world (incidentally, part of the play is based on Heisenberg: the act of looking determines whether an agent is a double or not...).  Anyway, here is what Kerner has to say:

“Safe house, sleeper, cover, joe… I love it. When I have learned the language, I will write my own book. The traitor will be the one you don’t like very much, it will be a scandal. Also I will reveal him at the beginning. I don’t understand this mania for surprises. If the author knows, it’s rude not to tell. In science this is understood: what is interesting is to know what is happening. When I write an experiment, I do not wish you to be surprised, it is not a joke. This is why a science paper is a beautiful thing: first, here is what we will find; now here is how we will find it; here is the first puzzle, here is the answer, now we can move on. This is polite. We don’t save up all the puzzles to make a triumph for the author - that is the dictatorship of the intelligentsia.”

So what I have to remember is that my book is more in the line of a Haynes Manual than an Agatha Christie whodunnit.
My job is to help the reader to understand and to be able to do certain things that I believe will be helpful in order to accomplish specific desired outcomes; not to provide a thrill-a-minute or a gradual build up of suspense and a cathartic resolution.

Weather, Dog-walking and Progress

I have just sent the revised drafts of the final chapters of my book to Andrew Derrington, who is kindly acting as my coach/editor and external conscience.

That feels like a very positive achievement, although there are a couple of caveats.  The first is that I thought I had a complete draft of the book last January: when I sent it to Andrew at that stage, his comment was that it was not so much a draft as some notes for a book... Alas, he was right. Thanks to his help and support, it is very much better now than it was then.

The second caveat is that although I have practically finished the last chapters, I have still got a lot of work to do on the first.  That is deliberate: we agreed that it made sense to edit the introductory part of the book once I was clear how the rest was turning out.


That proved wise, as I have recently removed four chapters that were essentially digressions. They are interesting (to me, at any rate) but detracted from the focus and clarity of the book. I will post them as blog posts on the new, dedicated blog I plan to launch when the book comes out. As I put it to one friend and colleague recently: 'Generally, I’ve decided the book is for my half-formed thoughts. Quarter-formed ones will go on the blog!'

It is perhaps no coincidence that the work rate on the book has accelerated recently: the very cold weather here has meant that it has been less tempting to skive off and walk the dog, and more inviting to stay by the stove and write. 

I should make it clear that the dog is still getting plenty of exercise, just not quite as much (on writing days) as she used to.

So I now have the early chapters to revise, and then there is some work to be done on graphics, illustrations and so on, and then... well don't hold your breath, but I am hoping for an announcement later this year...

Learning to Write (ii)

I blogged recently about the positive effect that writing a glossary had had on my writing, and my understanding of the writing process.

This week's assignment, which I have just reviewed with my writing coach, Andrew Derrington,  was equally powerful. Andrew had introduced me to the art (or science?) of reverse outlining.

The technique is simple: take your text, number the paragraphs, and for each numbered paragraph answer a few key questions, including 'What is the topic of this paragraph?' and 'Is there a topic sentence?'

Answering those questions enables you to check that each paragraph has a purpose, and then assess how well it accomplishes that purpose. It also enables you to look at the flow of the whole body of text (in my case a chapter) and see how well that accomplishes its purpose.

It is also invaluable in writing (or in my case, re-writing) an introduction and a summary.

I found, for example, that some of my paragraphs had no real purpose; some had two topics (so needed to be split into two paragraphs); there were some gaps in the logical flow of the chapter (so new paragraphs are needed); and some were underdeveloped, and needed clarifying or expanding. I also learned (again) that although I believe I write well, there is a lot more to learn; which is both humbling and exciting.

Moreover, it prompted me to look at the overall structure of the book in the same way, with the result that I am making some significant changes to that: cutting quite a lot that is peripheral or tangential, and clarifying the flow of ideas throughout the whole text.

It is very laborious, but I think re-pays the time and effort. So I am committed to do three things before my next conversation with Andrew in a couple of weeks: re-write the chapter I have just analysed, in the light of my analysis; undertake the same process with another chapter already drafted; and revise the chapter list to get a final structure for the book.

So finalising the text is some way off, but I am increasingly confident that it will be a good text when I eventually get there.

Learning to Write

I have blogged a few times about the (slow) progress of my book. However, what is really clear to me is how much I am learning from the process.

There is the obvious stuff, which anyone who writes seriously will know about: the ease with which one can fill time with not writing, or with writing related activities (but not writing) for example.

But this week I had a very specific task to do, and I did it: that was to write a glossary. There are two main reasons for this.  The first is to make sure that I am quite clear (both in my own mind and in my writing) precisely what I mean when I use a particular key word or phrase.  

The second is to help with editing: that is, to make sure that every time I use the word or phrase, I mean the same thing; and also every time I mean that thing, I use the same word or phrase.

That may sound obvious, but in fact it is not how I have tended to write. And that has been an interesting thing to learn. For example, I use the word 'story' a lot in the book. But I also use the word 'narrative'. And I switch between them quite freely. 

On reflection, the reason I do that is to avoid repetition; to make the text more interesting to read. But in fact it makes the text confusing. The reader may wonder if I use 'narrative' to mean something different from 'story.' It introduces a distraction.

I blame my education: I studied lots of literature along the way; and when one is writing in that environment, one tends to look for the novel and interesting way to express something, and either to consult a thesaurus or construct a mental one in order to avoid using the same word twice in quick succession. But writing for literary effect and writing for quick and easy comprehension are not the same, as my excellent writing coach, Andrew Derrington, has patiently helped me to learn.

The other interesting thing about compiling the glossary is that it has really made me re-think where I am up to with my ideas. Listing the fifteen or so key concepts and defining them has produced a very concise summary of my ideas, and helps me to see how they have developed over the years. In fact, in some cases, I am abandoning words or phrases that I have used throughout the book, as they don't clearly express what I now think.

So whilst publication still feels some way off, I can confidently assert that I am making progress.

Fantastic coaching!

It is not, perhaps, a surprise that I am a fan of coaching.

But even I might hesitate to write a headline about fantastic coaching and proceed to write about my own practice.

In fact, what prompts me to write this piece is reflecting on the coaching I have received which has helped me bring my first business book from an idea to something approaching a result (though there is still work to be done).

In the first instance, it was informal coaching by Liz Todd at Newcastle University. She may not even have realised she was coaching me, but she was.  I think it is such a habitual part of her style - to enquire and to bring out the best in others - that she does it almost without thinking.  But she it was who drew my attention to the fact that I had something new and interesting to say about this, and she has encouraged and educated me several times along the way, too. 


Secondly, my long-time professional coach Ann Bowen-Jones, has always been an integral part of my professional practice. Both as the supervisor of my own coaching practice, and as a personal coach, she has been a source of inspiration and support; appropriately challenging and always there in the long dark nights of the aspiring writer's soul…

In the early days, when I was unsure how, or even whether, to begin, I was also helped by Lorna Macleod, an American coach at Creative Callings, who specialises in this type of project.

And most recently, Andrew Derrington has kindly read the whole of the first draft, offered some very valuable feedback, and helped me to identify (and to commit to!) the necessary next steps to improve it. Andrew's experience and skills, both as a journalist and an expert on academic writing, have been extremely useful.

With all this support, help and advice, there is a real risk that this project will come to a successful conclusion - and not only that, but it will be significantly enhanced by all the expertise brought to bear. 

Incidentally, I talk to three of these four coaches by phone or Skype.  Some people are wary of telephone coaching, but in my experience, both as coach and coachee, whilst it has a very different dynamic, it can be extremely powerful.

Twice Upon A Time

I have just met the deadline to send the completed first draft of That Book to a friend and colleague for preliminary reading and editing by the end of January, so am in a reflective space (whilst awaiting, with some trepidation, his comments).

One thing I have realised is that the working title I had adopted some years ago now seems rather tired to me.  That could be projection, of course!

I had been calling it: Freeing People to Perform - How changing their stories can transform people

However, over dinner with some canny folk from Cardiff University, I mentioned that, and it fell rather flat, so I also admitted that I was beginning to wonder if a better title might be Twice Upon a Time. They thought that was a much more interesting title, and so do I. So  I am toying with Twice Upon a Time: The Art of Multistory Development.  (However, a quick google search for images to illustrate this post suggests that the title has twice been used already, so I may have to re-think!) Thrice Upon a Time would also work for my purposes, yet some how feels less satisfying. (It has been used by Odette England as the title for an artwork, but not, as far as I can see, as a book title.)

I would, of course, be grateful for any feedback on that.

I have also been reflecting on the multiple, and competing, stories I have about myself as a writer, which in many ways exemplify some of the main ideas of the book.

Some of these stories are:

The Aspiring Writer
The Self-deluding Pretend Writer
The Successful Writer

These vie for dominance in my thinking, as I variously work on the book, procrastinate, and get positive feedback from others on drafts.

But also, I can choose to attend more to one (say the last) than the others, and seek out evidence to strengthen that story in my mind, and commit to delivering more evidence of its truth: and that is helpful.

That is also, in essence, what the book is about.

UPDATE

In discussion with my wife and co-Director, we have arrived at another possibility:

Twice Upon A Time: How Multistory Development can improve organisational performance.

That is designed to make it clear this is a work-related book.  Feedback welcome!

Experiments in the Time Space Continuum

Some years ago, when we first moved from Newcastle to the Lake District, and for reasons with which I won't bore you now, we ended up living for a year in a small cottage.


I say small: it did have four bedrooms, but as there were seven of us (family plus mother-in-law) that felt small. It had no study, of course, so I ran the business from a corner of the (small) living room, on a very small desk that now serves as a hall table.  All my files were on the bottom shelves of a bookcase, which now serves as a stationery cupboard (and is, of course, now overflowing).

We have now moved to a larger house, complete with an outbuilding and attics: and guess what? We fill the space.

I was pondering this, because I am a great believer in Parkinson's Law Here is the first paragraph of the seminal article in The Economist in which the Law was explained and explored.:

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and despatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.

Parkinson was talking about time, yet I started by talking about space; but there is surely an intimate relationship between the two. I used to think it was Einstein who pointed this out, but have since been told it was Minkowski before him, and Proust before him, and the Incas before him.

Be that as it may, my experience with space, as demonstrated by the example above, and with time as I seek to manage it in my own life and help others to do so in theirs, is remarkably similar in this respect.

But it can work the other way, whatever the corollary ('the reverse is not true') may assert.  So this week and next, I had most of the week set aside to work on completing the first draft of my long awaited book. Yet a series of domestic crises have interrupted that precious time: on Tuesday the macerator stopped working.  If you know what a macerator does, you will understand that it was a crisis that needed an urgent solution.  Then yesterday my email software stopped working: again a crisis that needed urgent attention (and no little time).

Yet somehow, I am on track. The first eight chapters have been duly re-worked and polished and are ready to send out to a few readers; and I am confident that the rest will be done by my deadline of next Friday.

I would like (I would really, really, like) to know quite why that is.  After years of slow progress, why am I suddenly able to move it forward so quickly?  Various theories may cast some light on this. One is that I have made a firm commitment to somebody to send him the completed first draft by next Friday.  Another is that I have spent sufficient time mulling over it and my subconscious is now ready to deliver. A third is that I have reinstated my early morning run on the fell, after a slight lapse in December, which both invigorates me and increases my belief in my own will power (see my last post). 


There is probably some truth in all of those. I know the value of recruiting an 'external conscience' to help hold us to our good intentions; and I also recognise that our brains need some processing time for important and complex tasks. As for will power, that is something I do pay heed to: I know how easily I can slip into an idle mode that allows time to slip by. (As Douglas Adams, author of the Hitch Hiker's Guide, remarked: I love deadlines: I love the whooshing noise they make as they fly past!)

So all of these may be contributory factors, but I think there is something else in the mix, and am not sure what it is.  Maybe once I have sent the draft of the book off, I'll have the time to reflect more on this...