“Most admirable about Monkey people is their ability to solve problems. It is difficult to imagine a dilemma wherein the Monkey cannot take the upper hand, wade through the gory particulars, think up new and exotic ways to get at the pith of the problem and come triumphantly, if somewhat the worse for wear, out the other side.” Suzanne White, The New Astrology

Happy New Year!

February 8 ushers in the year of the monkey. Hopefully it will be a creative problem solving (and then fun) year for us all. I was born in the year of the monkey, myself, so I am particularly looking forward to investing my problem solving skills into all sorts of juicy stuff!

I’m starting a new phase:

After two long but interesting (very intriguing) years experimenting with various services, formats and markets I feel that my professional practice is now focused on things that allow me to draw successfully on my disparate skills and somewhat colourful and peripatetic work history.

I will be focused on investigating creativity, innovation and the workplace cultures that support or hinder these.

The services that reciprocally work best for me and my clients are:

·         Being a critical friend

·         Facilitating

·         Speaking

·         Writing

·         and Project Design.

Conversations of Intrigue

Having been put through a rigorous development and testing process I am excited to be able to seriously start marketing Conversations of Intrigue, a positively disrupting service that uses extracts from a work of art – literature, film, theatre – as prompts for groups to be able to explore organisational culture and narrative. While I can, and am happy to, work with any material that a client might want to use I can also supply facilitated conversations using extracts from John Le Carre’s masterful thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, as canny a portrait of organisational culture as any I’ve seen.

I have been a boundary spanner all my life…

… and don’t intend to stop now: a major marketing challenge for me this year will be to position myself as someone who is able to work with organisations developing cross sectoral collaborations. I am well used to helping arts and community groups manage relationships and develop projects for social responsibility and / or creative projects and am looking for more of this work.

I am honoured and excited, too, to be continuing to work on the Parallel Fascinations project with Dr Alexia Maddox and Romaine Logere; we look forward to facilitating cross sectoral dialogue and research that supports new research and helps innovators and researchers develop their ideas.

Thank you for following my blog!

I have had a break from publishing over the summer but I do love writing it and look forward to posting some material soon. Look out for articles that will help you reflect on creativity in the workplace, innovation, organisational culture and narrative.

In the meantime, enjoy what is left of the summer and Gong Xi Fa Cai!