Month: January 2015
Learning From Experience
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Improve upon what already exists. Collaborate with others to find better solutions.
This is the spirit of the Design Forum that will unfold commencing in Osaka mid-February across a nine month period to address a question we are asking: “how might we use our networks to improve e delivery of child survival?”
We have begun already, and you are not too late to get involved. Presently, the Davos World Economic Forum is being held discussing some big ideas, among which includes issues like child survival. We can gain insights from those conversations, but perhaps more importantly get a perspective of what makes a good forum by observing Davos. And that is the role of the Design Forum in Osaka: to deconstruct what we know so we can find the best way of having a conversation that matters.
The Design Forum began with a simple idea in 2010 that would be highlighted through a crazy and epic running stunt. The stunt is behind us now, but we take it with us as it gives a thread of narrative to give a meaningful connection between the cities where the Design Forum will take place.
An invitation to be part of the Design Forum will be sent out later today. It will be free to attend, and you don’t need to travel to Osaka. The formal part of the first Design Forum will take place across a three day window, but you needn’t be involved for the whole time. How you ‘attend’ and contribute is up to you. We want your ideas and input.
Right now, please sign this petition for Julie Bishop. It is asking her to be our official Champion to highlight the Design Forum. We will deliver this after the second Design Forum in Papua New Guinea. I have written to her already requesting her to be our Champion. With so many other responsibilities, it is understandable that she might wish us well, but decline, and that is ok. We will then ask again after the third, fourth, fifth, and so on Design Forums.
By asking again and again, we are actually opening a conversation rather than trying to wear her down to relent. And so the objective will be for her involvement in some manner at the final culminating Design Forum in Seoul in October this year. Everything else is part of the conversation, and that is very important too.
Please visit, sign and share: https://www.change.org/p/the-hon-julie-bishop-mp-champion-the-global-series-of-design-forum-to-improve-child-survival
Your Turn
Seth Godin is at it again. Another book is very soon to be released to challenge, inspire and reframe the how-we-do-things-around-here in our day to day lives. The “How we do things” when the we is a singular ‘I’.
Seth talks about his idea http://www.yourturn.link. The book’s title is: “What To Do When It’s Your Turn (and it’s always your turn)”. Like a lot of stuff Seth does, it is about shipping.
Seth’s colleague Winnie has put the YourTurnChallenge out there by inviting anyone to join in by writing one blog a day from 19 January on the theme of Your Turn. Read more and see her video here where the submission instructions can also be found. You don’t need your own blog! How easy is that!
This is what will be covered across the seven days:
Day 1: Why are you doing the Your Turn Challenge?
Day 2: Tell us about something that’s important to you.
Day 3: Tell us about something that you think should be improved.
Day 4: Teach us something that you do well.
Day 5: What advice would you give for getting unstuck?
Day 6: Tell us about a time when you surprised yourself.
Day 7: What are you taking with you from this Challenge?
I think this is an important challenge because it helps us (individually) to move past being unstuck which is mostly associated with one form of fear or another. It is also important from the perspective of the Design Forum because at is a process which involves all of us. It is not a spectator sport. It is not a massive plenary. The Design Forum all of us rising to the challenge of engaging with the right questions to find answers that will address how to improve the delivery of child survival.
You can blog about anything you want to, but could I suggest you help opening this conversation about the Design Forum. You don’t need to have the answers. You just need to ship.
Here are the rules:
- Blog every day for 7 days.
- You can write on any topic as long as you share a perspective. We’ll also have different prompts each day to spur your creativity.
- Optional: share your posts on Facebook or Twitter and tag it #YourTurnChallenge. Your friends and family will know if you skipped a day….
Whether you do or don’t, I am going to, but I hope you do too!
Defeat
There were many times since first conceiving this endeavour I have called the 10 City Bridge Run that I realised that what I had proposed was a little too close to the impossible, and that perhaps it might just be out of my reach.
Even since beginning this journey in Port Moresby back in September, I took the first steps with much apprehension as the way forwards was far from clear. It has been a tough journey.
And I am reminded of a great passage from a great general in his classic book, Defeat Into Victory, written by Field Marshall Sir William Slim. The passage speaks for itself:
“The only test of generalship is success, and I had succeeded in nothing I had attempted…The soldier may comfort himself with the thought that, whatever the result, he has done his duty faithfully and steadfastly, but the commander has failed in his duty if he has not won victory, for that is his duty. He has no other comparable to it. He will go over in his mind the events of the campaign. ‘Here, he will think, ‘I went wrong; here I took council of my fears when I should have been bold; there I should have waited to gather strength, not struck piecemeal; at such a moment I failed to grasp opportunity when it was presented to me.’ He will remember the soldiers whom he sent into attack that failed and who did not come back. He will recall the look in the eyes of men who trusted him. ‘I have failed them,’ he will say to himself, ‘and failed my country!’ He will see himself for what he is, a defeated general. In a dark hour, he will turn in upon himself and question the very foundations of his leadership and his manhood.
And then he must stop! For, if he is ever to command in battle again, he must shake off these regrets, and stamp on them, as they claw at his will and self confidence. He must beat off these attacks he delivers against himself, and cast out the doubts born of failure. Forget them, and remember only the lessons to be learnt from defeat, they are than from victory.”
The lessons from the 10 City Bridge Run have been many, and I am in the process of documenting them the best I can now to share more widely. I learnt most from when it was toughest, when there was no obvious way through the many barriers that lay across my path. It wasn’t only my capacity for preserving that brought me through, but it was because of the support of people like you that it was made possible.
Now I am turning my attention to the Design Forum, and it is taking shape. It is not at all what I expected it might be, but better, and I would hope will be more inspiring than what you might have considered as well. This process of the Design Forum is the real epic quest of this journey, and a journey that we must take together. The next steps forward are a team effort.
There has been plenty of failure to get us to this point, but that has been embraced by me. It was an essential part of the journey. The good think is it has given rise to success which we can all enjoy, but not without some hard work.
Starting Small
I have been writing to a friend in Osaka about the apprehension I harbour in beginning the first Design Forum next month.
She gave me some advice to persevere and not to worry, but just to begin with these words:
Starting small is the most important thing. No matter how small, it’s a start.
The Design Forum have become the second phase of an epic quest, and themselves mark the real work the comes from the effort expended in running the 10 sub-marathons each of 24 km in 10 cities across 10 countries as a stunt to open the conversation which is framed for the Design Forum. The conversation asks an important question: “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?”
I was explaining to my friend the metaphorical deep breath that I am taking ahead of commencing this next phase of the journey.
Running was hard work. There were too many problems and challenges to recall without flinching. But it was worthwhile. And it was in some respects easier because it was just me running, and because of resource constraints not a team of people running. If there had been a team running, the journey would have been different. If the journey was well-funded from the start, it would have been different. Not only was it what it was, but I contend that it took on its own life in the way that Joseph Campbell describes the narrative of an epic quest being guided in his writing about the Hero’s Journey.
The Design Forum presents a different challenge, and I think harder work.
Even though the journey has began already, this new journey of the Design Forum has just begun. And the first Design Forum might be small.
I don’t know how large the first Design Forum in Osaka will be. Probably small. And I fell a little embarrassed about that. Why do I feel embarrassed, I ask myself? I think it because of the useless action of comparing our own work against the juggernaut of how big this conversation is as presented by many of the institutions are in the world. As a side note, over the last four years I did speak with plenty of these groups to somehow partner or work together in this pursuit, but mostly drew polite responses of rejection largely associated with their fundraising and messaging objectives.
The words of an old American Army Special Forces buddy are ringing in my mind when I think about the advice from my friend in Osaka. He was doing some post-graduate study in management when we met many years ago, and later taught me a memorable small saying his professor taught him: “SS – TS -DV -SF“. And so I will!
Start Small. Think Strategically. Deliver Value. Scale Fast.
There is not a moment to waste! As Campbell would no doubt say: Follow your bliss!
Strove
I friend reminded me of the humourous epitaph written by Walter Savage Landor on the weekend:
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
- Nature I loved, and, next to nature, Art;
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
-
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Strove is the past tense of to strive which means “to make great efforts to achieve or obtain something”.
Hard work and the ability to persevere are their own reward quite often. After completing the first phase of the 10 City Bridge Run, having run an impossible journey around the world. I can say that I strove.
The Design Forum which mark the next phase in this epic quest are an opportunity for us to strive together.
Landor was most likely being idiosyncratically facetious with his short poem, and without getting lost in borrowing from the meaning of the poem, I can say that I want to strive with all of you, as the issue we are contending for is well worth our strife: improving the delivery of child survival.
Last week, I stumbled across a graffiti scrawled outside one of the many Chinese markets on Mott Street in New York. I don’t know if the author intentionally departed from Landor, but I think his inspiration is one we can share in together moving forward. You can see it at the photo on this page, and it reads:
Warm your hands with the invisible fire of hope!!!
So, please join me. Let us strive together, so that we can look back and say that we strove for something worth our strife.
What I Am Still In New York?
It would be understandable that some people might be asking what am I still doing in New York now that I have completed the running stunt framing the 10 City Bridge Run. Or to put that another way, what happens now that the running is concluded?
It was my intention to have already left New York so as to travel to Melbourne where I need to spend some long-overdue time with my family in the wake of my brother’s death. It wasn’t my plan to be away this long.
There has been a delay, as if there weren’t enough delays already encountered with getting the 10 City Bridge Run to this point. Right now, I am waiting for the dispersement of funds raised during the final legs of the 10 City Bridge Run to be deposited into my bank account. The fundraising concluded on the evening of 1 January (US time), but the dispersement wasn’t put into effect until about 24 hours ago. Put simply, those funds are needed to enable me to take the next steps, which includes leaving New York. In many respects, and in a very real sense, I am stuck until that money clears.
But just as delay and obstacle encountered during the running stunt of the 10 City Bridge Run gave rise to opportunity in unexpected ways, I am likely to return to Australia a little later than anticipated again, and travelling via a circuitous route that goes via Osaka and Seoul.
One reason for the extended route home is that it is cheaper. It actually works out cheaper (and less painful in terms of flying hours) to travel with a broken journey via Asia. The cost is slightly less than a single flight from New York to Australia.
How this opportunity to travel via Asia to Australia rather than going direct from New York came about was trying to resolve how I might attend a scheduled appointment I have in Seoul on 21 January. Additionally, my concern was how to best coordinate planning for the first of the Design Forum to be held in Osaka during the period 10-12 February 2015.
Talking about something as a foreigner to that city might sound interesting, but it needs to be followed up with credible action for people to take you seriously. Having the opportunity to return to Osaka for a couple of days allows a requisite degree of consent and consensus from the host organisation in Osaka. It would be entirely unreasonable to fire off a couple of emails and expect for things to fall into place.
I will fly to Seoul after Osaka, which will be an opportunity to build some interest among possible satellite organisations who could participate in the first Design Forum from a location other than Osaka. Having one organisation agree to participate creates a model for others to follow.
Seoul is also the location for the final Design Forum, and so provides an opportunity for meaningful discussions around what might be possible and what might be needed to make the possible happen.
This first Design Forum is important to build momentum and a sense of identity for the conversation that follows. In the coming days, I will frame my vision of what that might look like, and welcome your involvement, steering and participation to make it a good event.
My friend Mary raised an idea a few weeks ago which was to explore ways of schools getting involved in the Design Forum. I think her idea is brilliant, and we are looking for other opportunities like that to expand and grow the opportunity for the Design Forum as a coherent and scalable conversation to address the important question driving this process asking: “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?”
In the meantime, I have very cheap digs at an idiosyncratic New York flop-house, and will be using the few days I have remaining in the city to build support here and other cities as we move forward towards achieving this epic quest.
Thank You
A quick note to everyone who has been part of this journey to date: thank you.
On Saturday 3 January 2015, I completed the final leg of an epic quest by running the 10th leg of 24 km in New York on a cold, wet and dark night.
To recap: back in August 2010, I announced my intention to commence a journey called the 10 City Bridge Run. Four years later than anticipated, I concluded the first leg of this journey which involved a stunt running 10 sub-marathons each of 24 km in 10 cities across 10 countries. The stunt was designed to open a conversation asking an important question: “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?”
In those four years, it has not been an easy journey, even though for the most part it might have seen from an outsiders perspective that there seemed to be little happening until September 2014. Suffice to say that starting anything takes effort and involves accepting risk. It has been difficult, but it has also been worthwhile.
Literally only a few people, less than a handful, are actually aware of how hard that journey has been. Maybe I ought to have shared more about those difficulties, but I think I was right not to because the journey is not actually about me. It is about us.
I couldn’t have done this without you. Please read that last sentence again for emphasis. Actually, that last sentence “I couldn’t have done this without you” needs some clarification. I knew I would need help to make this journey possible, but was unaware of how reliant I would be for support in ways I never expected from you. I needed the help you gave to get to this point, and perhaps just as importantly if not of more significance, this is a journey ‘we’ are on together, and so I couldn’t have become the ‘us’ without your involvement.
The contribution from some might seem to them insignificant. “I did nothing!” you might protest. I just want you to kn ow that encouragement even through a simple comment or liking a post from time to time carries with it greater influence than you might ever know. So thank you. And especially to the many supporters, this journey is as much as your achievement as it is of mine, regardless of when you joined the journey. We are in this together.
While we are now some distance down the road from the idea where this journey began, this quest is only just beginning now. This is an epic journal rich with metaphor. People have told me about their reflections about what I am doing and the metaphor they identify in the journey, and more often than not I am surprised how they see it from a perspective I never considered. And there is plenty of more meaning to come that all of us have yet to identify or explore.
While the journey has only begun, this is not an exercise is the abstract exploration of a literary device. This journey has meaning. The running stunt of this journey allowed us to arrive at the start point of what we are really here to do, rather than a destination.
Yes, the real journey is about to begin. That journey essentially comes in two parts:
- Co-creation of a book called Life Bridge which will feature 100 photos of human bridges to illustrate the importance of connection to meet a grand challenge, in this case our quest to improve the delivery of child survival. Everyone who has supported the journey to date will receive a copy as has been my obligation to you from the beginning of this journey.
- A series of Design Forum to be held in the cities where running took place to address the central challenge to the 10 City Bridge Run which asks: “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?”
I certainly have many ideas about what these two aspects of the journey ought to look like, but this is where there is some definite transition from a very difficult pursuit that I was undertaking largely as the central actor and at considerable personal risk to myself, to one where we will together be responsible for driving the outcome and where the risk is essentially to try ideas on for size and see what works and what doesn’t. The journey ahead is the sum of our collective dreams, our collective imaginations, and reaching out to many experts with the specialist knowledge that we need to guide the conversation. We can afford to be bold, but we also need to make sure it is well planned and well executed. Don’t worry – I’m not going anywhere, and will continue to serve by leading. I might be tired from the running, but I am totally invigorated to work together as we embark on the next chapter of this epic quest.
But as I get my thoughts together after finishing this first part of the journey to open the conversation that follows, I wanted to first say thank you.
This is also an opportunity to open up the conversation to ask (how) would you like to be involved in the conversation going forward? Spectators are welcome too! And if you have just stumbled across this for the first time, welcome aboard!
In the meantime, I have a lot to share that I want to post here. Many photos and videos from the trip, many thoughts, and especially many small conversation starters to orientate the focus better towards child survival.
This is a big undertaking and we are just getting started.
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Building Bridges 