Which Way From Here? #37 #cong22

Synopsis:

Traditionally, we looked to our work or our faith for our sense of purpose, but when these fail us, we must look somewhere else instead.

Total Words

814

Reading Time in Minutes

3

Key Takeaways:

  1. For most of us, our sense of purpose is not satisfied by either work or faith.
  2. As a result, the ways in which we seek our purpose has changed.
  3. Now that we can relate to the whole world through ever-expanding media of communication, we are often tempted to retreat to a self-centred sense of purpose.
  4. Choosing to relate to the whole world requires a generous spirit, and a real commitment to give and take.

About Gerard Tannam:

Gerard Tannam leads Islandbridge Brand Development (www.Islandbridge.com), a team of specialists working to build great relationships in the marketplace that bridge the gap between buyers and sellers.

Contacting Gerard Tannam:

You can connect with Gerard on LinkedIn, see his work in Islandbridge or send him an email. 
.

By Gerard Tannam

“Could you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where-“said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“- so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

Once upon a time, many of us found our purpose in our work or in our faith. I say ‘found’ when, of course, I really mean that we often had it thrust upon us by our family and our community. For most of us, in those far off days of scratching about for a living, it was largely a question of survival, getting by both a means and an end, a somewhat joyless existence when you think about it. And whilst we were busy surviving, a small number with time on our hands – the appointed and the self-appointed alike – busied ourselves in exploring our world and seeking a sense of purpose that might reach past simply getting by.

When that world itself wasn’t enough and gave us no answers only pointers, we looked further afield. We pictured worlds beyond this one, places and people who might help us make sense of our everyday lives. But when one day in the fields or at the workbench is added to another, and then to another again, and hardly seems to amount to much, it’s only natural that we dream of neverlands or wonderlands where we might instead find our purpose. Which brings us back to Alice and those not so faraway nineteenth century days when more and more of us, and not just the appointed ones, had time on our hands to question the meaning of it all.

When we returned like Alice from our adventures down the rabbit hole and realised that there were no answers to be found there only questions, and when those who ordain the work that we do and the faith that we follow no longer inspired our confidence, we were left once again to seek our purpose with this world only as our reference.

As we look around this world and we ask ourselves what purpose we might have, most of us are drawn to consider first what we want from the people, the creatures and the places closest to us. This sense of purpose is often self-centred, concerned more with what we get than what we give. Until we realise that this is unsatisfactory, and that we are more likely to be truly satisfied only when we establish relationships that are more give and take.

For most of us, we get our sense of purpose from one another, from the relationships which we form with the people, the creatures and the places that make up our world. And as the media through which we relate to the world brings us closer to the wider world, many of us find that our sense of purpose has grown to concern how we relate to everyone and everything everywhere in the world.

This can be hugely daunting, even overwhelming, and it’s tempting for us to retreat to our starting point, to a self-centred take on the people, and the creatures and the places that make up our world, rather than the more expansive one to which we are naturally drawn.

Choosing to relate to the whole world takes courage. It requires a generous spirit. If we choose to relate with those other people, creatures and places, we must do it with a real commitment to both give and take. When it comes to the work we do, we and the world are best served when its purpose corresponds to our overall sense of purpose in the world. If it doesn’t, it leaves most of us deeply dissatisfied.

November 21, 2022 2022 Purpose No comments yet
How To Play Follow-The-Leader (Without Being Led Astray)

How To Play Follow-The-Leader (Without Being Led Astray) #27 #cong21

Synopsis:

 In 2021, leadership is often confused with prominence or notoriety. Yet, each of us is tasked with leadership, whether we like it or not, and must carefully decide our course of action before inviting others to join us or choosing who to follow.

Total Words

814

Reading Time in Minutes

3

Key Takeaways:

  1. Sometimes warning signs tell us the whole truth about our world, and sometimes they don’t.
  2. Life isn’t a morality tale, and the good don’t always get their just rewards or the bad their just desserts.
  3. When we rush to appoint a leader without questioning their motives, we are likely to be led astray.
  4. Each of us is tasked with leadership, and must set our course of direction, before inviting others to join us or deciding who we might follow.

About Gerard Tannam

 Gerard Tannam leads Islandbridge Brand Development (www.Islandbridge.com), a team of specialists working to build great relationships in the marketplace that bridge the gap between buyers and sellers.

Contacting Gerard Tannam:

You can connect with Gerard on Twitter, LinkedIn, see his work with Islandbridge or send him an email.

How To Play Follow-The-Leader (Without Being Led Astray)

By Gerard Tannam

What to do when the world seems to be falling down around you? Where to run to for cover? And who to look to for direction or leadership?

I don’t recall hearing the story of Henny Penny (or Chicken Licken, as it’s sometimes known) when I was a child, or perhaps I simply wasn’t impressed by the story of the little hen who throws herself and her friends into a panic when she mistakes an acorn falling on her head for the beginning of the end of the world.

And so, she sets out to tell the king: ‘The sky is falling! The sky is falling!’ And as she goes, she meets others who join her on her panic-stricken quest. The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Now, as with many folk tales, there are many endings to this story, ranging from the happy-ever-after to the more gruesome, so it could be that I remained unimpressed because the story told to me had an ‘all is well that ends well’ ending, which just didn’t ring true.

Another ending has Henny Penny and her feathered friends meeting Foxy Loxy on the way, who promptly invites them to his lair for protection. Just in time for dinner!

Now that’s much more impressive, even for middle-aged me, and seems to me to be a far more apt and cautionary tale for our times, when it feels as though the world is falling down around our ears, and there’s no shortage of would-be leaders, whether kings or foxes, promising to fix the crumbling sky and lead us all to safety.

Sometimes, we’re told that we get the leaders we deserve and sometimes that’s true. But, of course, it’s never quite as simple as that. Much as we like to make it so, real life isn’t a morality tale. The good don’t always get their just reward, and the not-so-good (or simply the plain bad) don’t always get their just desserts.

But whatever about the good and the bad, things rarely end well for the gullible, and those of us rushing about taking the world and everyone in it at face value are likely to be misled, whether by kings or charlatans, if we don’t take a more critical view.

Although modern media appears to make matters worse when it comes to discerning our best course of action, and those best equipped to lead it, we’ve always shown a weakness for following the powerful or the cunning without question. It’s always been easy to join the baying crowd and to appoint the leader who plays on our fears and professes to understand us.

And it’s always been easy too to blame the messenger when our rush of blood leads us badly astray.

For in our story, we have three leaders to choose from (as well as quite a few followers). And although she might be reluctant to think so, our Henny Penny has the greatest responsibility of all when it comes to choosing which type of leader she will be.

So, what is the moral of Henny Penny, if it’s not that we get what we deserve? Perhaps it’s that each one of us, whether we like it or not, is tasked with leadership. Each of us can set our course of direction and invite others to join us, or instead choose to join those whose own course of direction truly matches ours.

And even if we are reluctant to appoint ourselves leaders, we certainly have a responsibility to be critical of those we rush to follow when they claim to have an easy fix for the sky falling. Otherwise, we might be just in time for someone else’s dinner.

November 17, 2021 2021 Leadership No comments yet

Home Is Where The Heart (of Society 3.0) Is #10 #cong20

Synopsis:

 In 2020, to be social is to potentially put yourself and others in your social circles in harm’s way, so how do we rethink and reconfigure our society for both the individual and the common good?

Total Words

832

Reading Time in Minutes

3

Key Takeaways:

  1. Society 3.0 is most likely to be inspired by our individual and collective senses of Society 1.0
  2. This period of social distancing heightens our realisation of the importance of home
  3. Many of us are cruelly distanced from one another, even before the social distancing that’s become our norm for 2020.
  4. A society that’s fit for purpose is always founded in each of us having a place that we can call our home.

About Gerard Tannam

 Gerard Tannam leads Islandbridge Brand Development (www.Islandbridge.com), a team of specialists working to build great relationships in the marketplace that bridge the gap between buyers and sellers.

Contacting Gerard Tannam:

 You can contact Gerard by email., follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn or check out his work in Islandbridge.  

By Gerard Tannam.

My first memory of being part of a social group sees me sitting at the dining-room table which has been cleared to make way for the family’s record-player, and we’re listening to Oldies (but Goldies), a collection of Beatles’ singles released earlier in the decade. It’s the late ‘60s, I think, which makes me four or five, and I can see from the faces of my parents and brothers and sister that we’re sharing something really special, and it feels great to be part of it. Society 1.0 for me, I guess.

Fast forward to 2020, when social distancing rather than social togetherness is the norm, and it seems that my world has shrunk again to my dinner table, and I dare not socialise beyond the four walls of my home for fear of putting myself and others in harm’s way. The early days of lockdown, when we were inspired with the heroism of sticking together by remaining apart, seem even more of a distant pipedream than those ‘oldie but goldie’ days which are instantly evoked by something as beguiling as the opening bars of Yesterday.

From discussions with family and friends, I don’t think I’m alone in my time-travelling back to an era of homemade dinners and freshly baked scones, and it seems to me that many of us trace an idealised view of what society might be to our early days around the table. So perhaps that might be a good place too for us to begin the task of making tomorrow’s Society 3.0 everything it should be, even if tomorrow’s soundtrack is no longer to be the Beatles.

When we make home the heart of our society, it gives us something of a blueprint for how we might design and build the other structures beyond our four walls. It’s only when we recognise that a sense of belonging and togetherness, even when apart, underpins both our individual and therefore our collective sense of wellbeing that we can begin to truly reimagine our society and deliver a world where all of us can feel very much at home.

So how does Society 2.0 stack up against our common and inbuilt need of a place to call our own? Even our current social distancing can’t disguise the fact that too many of us live in a society which hasn’t delivered us a real home of our own. Beyond those sleeping on our streets and in our doorways, there are many more housed in places and conditions where the four walls confine and close in on them, creating an even more damaging sense of social distance that will last long after the more public restrictions and constraints of our time are a faint memory.

As a result, many of us are cruelly distanced from one another, and those of us most in need of a good neighbour are unable to bridge the chasm that’s been created between us and them and must rely instead on the kindness of strangers. And nobody wishes to rely on that.

So, as we figure out the shape and the substance of the new worlds which we’re creating using the latest skills and tools at our disposal, we must make sure that home is where the heart of our Society 3.0 is. It’s only in providing for every one of us a place that we can call home that we can each begin to emerge confidently into the open spaces between us and forge the relationships that underpin our social life or society.

Whatever version of Society that we wish to build, whether it’s realised in a family discovering a shared taste in music or an outsider being made welcome to participate in all of the good things on offer, a society that’s fit for purpose is always founded in each of us having a place that we can call our home.

October 5, 2020 2020 Society 3.0 No comments yet

Why Community Mustn’t Mean Market #43 #cong19

Synopsis:

Too often, those of us in business tend to see people as potential customers first. Communities are far too important in our lives for us to mistake them for markets, as a collection of people to be sold to.

4 Key Takeaways:

  1. Too often, those of us in business tend to see people as potential customers first.
  2. Communities are far too important in our lives for us to mistake them for markets, as a collection of people to be sold to.
  3. When we consider a person purely in terms of their buying power, we devalue our sense of community and become instead a market where all we share are those common purchases.
  4. We must see community as meaning much more than market and build markets to serve our communities, rather than the other way around.

About Gerard Tannam:

Gerard Tannam leads Islandbridge Brand Development (www.Islandbridge.com), a team of specialists working to build great relationships in the marketplace that bridge the gap between buyers and sellers.

Contacting Gerard Tannam:

You can follow Gerard on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, send him an email or see his work in IslandBridge

By Gerard Tannam

I remember as a young boy hearing the adults talk about the prospects of Ireland joining something called the EEC, which I later learned stood for European Economic Community. I don’t recall much of the detail of what they discussed, but what I do remember seemed to centre only on the economic advantages of joining rather than on any of the other benefits of being a part of a much wider community.

In the meantime, of course, we discovered that we had much in common with our continental cousins-by-marriage, and found ourselves exchanging far more than the goods and services that were the focus of our discussions back then.

I was reminded of this recently as I listened to the various parties in the UK argue the priorities around agreeing a deal to exit the European Union, when it again appeared to me that the benefits of being a part of a greater community beyond national borders carried little weight.

Of course, as both citizen and business-owner, I have a vested interest in our being able to continue to trade easily and profitably with our nearest neighbours, but it dismays me that our discussions around their leaving seem to be much more around their exiting the common market than withdrawing from our community.

Now, this commercial take on community isn’t confined to discussions around Britain’s exit. More and more, we talk about communities as though they were simply markets. And the more we talk about and think about our neighbours in this way, the less likely we are to enjoy the real benefits of being part of this wider community.

When we put a price on participation, when we consider a person purely in terms of their buying power, we are in danger of devaluing our sense of community and becoming instead a common market where all we share are our purchasing behaviours and attitudes.

Whilst access to a common market may continue to be one very important benefit of being a part of a community, it’s vital that we don’t overlook the more essential benefits such as shared values, common interests and collective projects, all of which enable us to achieve far more together than alone.

When we see community only as market, we are in serious danger of growing cynical around our relationships with others in our communities and, in the words of Oscar Wilde, ‘knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing’.

Whilst it’s always useful to understand the cost of the contributions we make into our relationships with neighbours and colleagues, viewing those costs in isolation without appreciating the return on our investment in terms of the great value to our wellbeing and the greater richness of our experience means our sums will never seem to add up.

And so, we must see community as meaning much more than market and understand that our markets are built to serve our communities, and not the other way around.

This is not to suggest that markets built on such foundations cannot be commercially successful. We only have to visit some of the great food markets in continental Europe, or indeed in our own city of Cork, to see that a market can thrive when it is founded to meet the needs of the community.

As we survey the market-stall holders and their customers in full flow, and see the fruitful exchange of produce for cash, the evident sense of prosperity and well-being makes it easy to appreciate that there’s far more being traded than what’s changing hands before us.

In that moment, market does look very much like community, because in that moment, the market is serving the community, and buyer and seller is each a vital player adding to the greater value that’s being generated in every transaction.

October 31, 2019 2019 Community 1 comment