Having a Laugh

I'm at the CIPD HRD Conference at Olympia today (Wednesday 24th April), and having been very busy at work in the last few weeks, I have been neglecting my social and professional networks.  Come the weekends, I've found my brain so full of work-related 'stuff' that I've either not logged into Twitter and LinkedIn or have done so - and facebook - but just engaged in some personal comments and light banter. This has thrown up  some interesting perspectives for me, particularly in relation to my 'professional' profile and my 'personal' profile and interactions, and where humour sits between or across those domains. Combined with seeing some 'humorous' tweets about some of the Conference topics already today, it has raised questions for me of authenticity, appropriateness and self-censorship.

I am someone who is passionate about wit and wordplay.  The essence of a 'joke' is the element of surprise - that's what makes us laugh; and I love it when someone does precisely that - ambushes me with the unexpected - and I find myself helpless with laughter as a result.  

My long-standing 'Hero of Comedy' is the genius who was Eric Morecombe.  I find myself almost incapable of articulating the exquisite agony of watching him and Ernie Wise in the endless re-runs of their television programmes (but I'll have a go).  I am in a conflicted state of joy and sadness when I watch them, torn between total love and enjoyment of their wit and humour and the still palpable sense of loss that they are no longer with us.   I literally watch Eric and Ernie with tears in my eyes - of both laughter and sadness - and I know this is inextricably tied to the passing of my Father - on which I have previously blogged - "Age Appropriate", December 2011 - 30 years ago. I can still hear Dad roaring with laughter at M&W on Sunday evenings when I was growing up, and I spent much of my formative years developing my own sense of humour, comedy and timing by learning from people like Eric Morecombe and Tommy Cooper, and then trying to make my Father laugh. If Eric Morecombe was my Hero of Comedy, Dad was my arbiter of what worked and what didn't work.

When I was an actor, I loved doing comedy and have fond memories of performing in Alan Aykbourn plays at Dundee Rep and with John Inman in Eastbourne.  I always got work at Christmas time, in Panto, usually playing some kind of comedy foil - Broker's Man in "Cinderella", Mate to the bossy Captain in "Jack and the Beanstalk" (#1), "Simple Simon' in "Jack and the Beanstalk" (#2) and Pong the Chinese Policeman in "Alladin" (the panto where I met my future wife, Mandy, back in 1982).

It's a fine line tho', between being funny (in my view, authentic) and being a clown (artifice).  On that basis, I rarely enjoy slapstick or comedy based around stupidity (Sorry, Miranda), but I do admit to getting the occasional giggle out of "You've Been Framed" (something to do with schadenfreude I reckon).

So, back to social media, professional networking, the difference between humour and sarcasm and the effectiveness /appropriateness of both in those arenas.

What works well as a throw-away remark or light-hearted comment in a face to face environment relies on everyone being 'in on the joke' by being present and being able to pick up on all the cues - verbal and non-verbal - which make up the context.  That applies as much in the theatre as it does in the boardroom or the classroom.  It also explains why stand-up comedy works, because the audience can both see and hear the comedian, and can appreciate their physicality as well as the story or joke itself.  Similarly, good radio humour is 'good' because it is unambiguous in its intent, its delivery and its clarity - written to ensure that the lack of visual cues does not detract from its impact.

And then we come to humour in the online world.  This, I would suggest, is an altogether more difficult and treacherous beast, more likely to bite the unwary and careless.  Even more so, if attempted within the constraints of the Twitter 140-character limit.  From my observations, some people don't quite get that.  

Some of the people I follow on Twitter are professional comedians or commentators, and they post humorous tweets which are great examples of the art of the online joke - I'm thinking here of people like David Schneider (@davidschneider) and Dara O'Briain (@daraobriain) - and I enjoy a bit of banter with my Personal Learning Network (PLN) as much as the next person.

However, my own self-preservatory instincts mean that I frequently self-censor online what I would normally risk' in the room' or f2f precisely because I don't think it would translate or it would be misconstrued, misunderstood or misinterpreted.  The immediacy and ease with which one can dash off a witty response to someone else's tweet or comment has tripped up many people, and - particularly where the professional and the personal learning networks meet or indeed overlap - could mean the end of some beautiful friendships. 

Sarcasm, "the last resort of the imaginatively bankrupt" (Cassandra Clare - @cassieclare), in an attempt to be funny or to make a point, does not play well in this space either, coming across - in my opinion - as judgemental and smug, whether delivered 'dead pan' or with an implied wink (and, by the way, don't you just hate people who wink?).  Something to be avoided, I'd suggest.

By all means, tell us a funny story, but let there be either a good punchline (surprise me) or have a good learning point to make that we can benefit from (connect).  I thank you.

So there you go; bit of a rant today - and probably making myself a hostage to fortune before my own session "Simplifying L&D with Efficient Use of  Technology" - but I hope it's stimulated some thoughts and I'd love to hear what you think about the use of humour in our connected world.  What's been your experience as contributor and as recipient?  Easy to find and do? Difficult to judge and share? Am I being over-careful, over-sensitive, over-critical?  What works for you?  What doesn't work for you?  Tell all...

Go on, give us a laugh!

Plate Spinning

I've just started a week-long break from work, using up annual leave before the end of the financial year.  As is usually the case, I was in a flurry of activity to clear down outstanding work and to leave ongoing work in as tidy and manageable a state as possible before I left. Inevitably, and despite my best efforts and intentions - one or two things didn't quite pan out as I'd hoped and I had to leave some tasks unfinished or still 'in flight' (bingo!) and delegated to others to complete or maintain in my absence.

I've been a functional and people manager for many years now (both at work, and as a Husband and Dad), and for much of that time, have likened my role to that of a stage juggler, spinning plates on sticks.  It often feels as though my line of sticks gets longer and longer with more and more plates needing to be spun up and kept spinning simultaneously. Easy to keep the plates directly in front of me spinning nicely, but then I would have to rush from one side of the stage to the other to keep the wobblers from falling to the stage with a resounding crash.

When I was IT Training Manager at Sussex Police, my team picked up on the analogy and we would have 'work-in-progress' discussions around which plates were spinning nicely, which were wobbling and needed spun up and which had completed their performance,  been caught and placed in the 'done' stack.  I got huge satisfaction from team members coming to me and saying things like "I spun that plate back up for you yesterday, Niall".

That's how it felt on Friday at 5:00pm, when, due to a complete oversight on my part (I had forgotten to book a meeting room for an all-day team meeting on the day I get back to work and all rooms appeared to be now unavailable), I had to phone lots of people and ask them to sort it out for me.  But, apart from feeling like a prat for not having booked it myself, I have gone on leave confident that the team and those who can assist, will do so and will do it willingly and we will have a meeting room for my return.  The plate was wobbling and was dangerously close to falling off, but others have shaken the stick and spun it back up.

I tweeted to that effect later that evening, thanking those colleagues - and my lovely wife - for helping me to keep my plate spinning act going, even 'tho I was not actually going to be on the stage myself for a week or so.

 

An ex-colleague from my Sussex Police days, now a senior L&D Manager herself, immediately tweeted back how she remembered me using that analogy nearly 10 years ago. That gave me a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling of consistency, connection and cooperation.  I am surrounded by family, friends and colleagues who, whilst I may take a coordinating role, all feel that they can, and are prepared to, step in, take responsibility, and keep the show on the road. 

Who's helping you keep your plates spinning? Are you giving them permission to do so? Or are you running the show yourself, dashing from one side of the stage to the other, wearing yourself out whilst others can only stand and watch, waiting to see your plates start to crash around you? 

I'm not expecting any broken crockery on my return.

Struggling with Statelessness

It was Burns Night on Friday.  Having recently reconnected with my ex-drama college friends prior to us all meeting up in September for a 40 year reunion in Edinburgh, I was party to a lot of facebook status updates and conversations about this culturally significant annual event in Scotland. That got me thinking about how disconnected I feel at times like this from my Scottish culture and heritage, and for the first time, I found myself unaccountably sad.  This blog is my reflection on why that might have been.

Although I was born, brought up and educated in the West of Scotland (Paisley, if that means anything to anyone), my parents were aspiring middle-class, both being the only children of working class parents.  Dad had been taken out of school at 15 to be put to a trade, and became a master carpenter.  When I first became aware of what my father 'did', he was working in the Drawing Office at the local Ordnance Factory in Bishopton.  So, although 'handy around the house', he had moved on from earning a living as a carpenter.  As a child growing up, I remember him studying in the evenings and going to 'night school' (whatever that was).  And then one day, he was a teacher, having qualified with various HNDs that entitled him to start lecturing at Technical College, which he promptly did.

Mum was a clerk/typist and worked in places like local council offices.  During the war, she had been in REME (the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineering corp) - History of REME - and as a child, I was under the fond misapprehension - and told everyone - that my mother repaired tanks during the war!  She stopped working when my brother Malcolm and I were young, but returned to part time work when we were considered old enough to get to and from school and eat something by ourselves.

Both observant Presbyterians, Mum and Dad ensured that we attended church every week; Malcolm and I went through the obligatory 'Sunday School' route into the youth club, without ever managing to develop any kind of faith and I remain firmly non-religious to this day (more on that later).  

Mum sang in choirs and with other soloists at Womens Guild meetings, old folks homes and the like.  My exposure to Scottish folk culture at home therefore was firmly in the what I now perceive as the safe, middle-class, non-threatening Scottish folk culture represented by artists like Kenneth McKellar - http://www.last.fm/music/Kenneth+McKellar - and Moira Anderson - http://www.last.fm/music/Moira+Anderson . Andy Stewart was just about OK, but we considered the Alexander Brothers a bit common.  And real 'folk music' was for hippies and the hairy sweater brigade.

When I went to drama college in Edinburgh in 1973, it was just before the end of the era when having a regional accent was considered a hindrance to making progress as an actor - unless one wanted to remain just within the 'Scottish' theatre scene.  So learning to speak Southern British Standard (SBS) was de rigeur Phonetics.  With hindsight again, this now seems to have been another brick in the wall separating me from my Scottishness.  

Nowadays of course, regional accents are the norm in all forms of entertainment and, frankly, it never did Sean Connery any harm!  And although I did some of my best work as an actor later at Dundee Repertory Theatre, I was already London-based by then, with a hybrid accent, essentially SBS with a Scottish lilt, which confused and still confuses people, and never fitted the mould of what being a Scottish actor seemed to be; never really belonged there.

Jump forward to living in Brighton, married to a London girl - and Jewish to boot - and with no large extended family of my own, my sense of my own cultural heritage and background was gradually becoming more and more diluted.  Once the children came long, I found myself becoming more and more aware of and involved in the ritual and observance of my wife's rich Jewish family, cultural and religious heritage, although I remain personally non-religious.  We have brought both Natasha and Samuel up with a strong sense of themselves as secular Jews in a modern world - they have both had Bat and Bar Mitzvahs and later Cabalat Torah experiences and have been on summer camps and foreign visits with their Jewish peers.  They have no issues or misapprehensions about who they are, what their cultural and religious heritage really is and are both very grounded and comfortable in where it fits into their modern daily lives.

If you have read my previous blogs you may know my Father died when I was only 27 and my Mother passed away in a nursing home in Ayrshire five years ago.  My Brother and his family live in Lincolnshire, so with no extended family still in the country, I have had no reason to visit Scotland - other than for work - since then.

 

Now, if my own journey thus far sounds as though I've been a little passive, an assimilated passenger, if you like, in this story, I would not necessarily disagree with you. I have always thought of - and frequently described myself - as an  'Anglicised Scot', or more realistically, 'British'. On reflection, that's kind of a cop-out.  For years, I've been denying the niggling suspicion that I felt culturally and socially stateless, but that that was OK.  In truth, I have been suppressing real underlying feelings of disconnect, loneliness and - yes - guilt. I think that's what Burns Night this year has surfaced for me, why I felt sad and why I felt the need to write this blog.

So what to do about it?  Acknowledging the fact is in itself a good start. Having reconnected with my Edinburgh college pals is another step forward. Time perhaps to connect with and talk to some of those people on a more personal, 1-to-1 level, explore what being Scottish means to them; do some historical research; take the opportunity to do more work in one of our Scottish offices, in Glasgow or Aberdeen - and spend more time there around those visits.  Sounds like the start of a plan...

Anyone else similarly culturally challenged, stateless and/or disconnected out there? What's been your experience and what, if anything, have you done about it?

 

Thanks for reading; feel free to comment.

Putting the Social into Social Media

I blogged in September and October last year on my hesitation and doubts about engaging more actively with facebook, despite being an active and enthusiastic contributor in other social media arenas like Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.  I set myself a challenge to face up to my reservations, feel the fear, and make a real effort to connect (and reconnect) with my social - as opposed to my professional - network through facebook.  I've been doing that for three months now and thought I give you an update on how it's going.

Initial thoughts.  I still find facebook quirky and, in some cases, downright obscure in its functionality and layout.  I still struggle to find features and, when I do find them, find them difficult to use.  That said, the more one uses any software, the more one finds out about it and the easier it becomes to use - that's how I got started in IT Training 20 years ago, after all.  (As a side note, it's nothing in comparison to trying to get to grips with Windows8 on a non-touch screen laptop! Maybe another blog on that later...)

I now log into facebook at least once a day. I don't always update my status, but I try to take an interest in the comings and goings of my 'friends', and I 'like' or comment where appropriate.  I've tried to take the same approach with facebook as I do with my other main SoMe channel, Twitter - i.e. be as authentic as possible and hope that that is recognised and responded to.

The main focus of my facebook activity has turned out to be the coordination and communication of a 40-year drama college reunion in Edinburgh in September this year - something I was encouraged to do by a couple of my old college friends when I reconnected with them back in October last year.  I accepted the challenge, both as a social/networking opportunity and as a social media opportunity - to extend my interactions and skills in both areas.

I set up a facebook Event page for the reunion and invited those friends with whom I was connected, to join and to invite their friends, with whom I was not connected.  This gave me a sense of whether or not a reunion in itself 'had legs'.  Initial feedback was positive, so I extended my search for others via old address books and contact lists, Google searches, FriendsReunited (yes, it's still out there) and email.  Several other people have now joined in and, in fact, someone else set up a complimentary facebook college Group.  Already the reunion is taking on a different shape and scope - it's getting bigger, encompassing more people than just those from my own '73-'76 alumni group, but from the years above and below my year, many of whom made contact through facebook to ask if they could participate as well.

One 'issue' I encountered early on in setting up the facebook reunion event, was selecting a date that would suit everybody. No date - no event, according to facebook. So I selected a random Saturday in September to allow me to do all the other things that setting up an event required, like inviting people.   But very soon, I began to get people saying they couldn't make the date I had provisionally selected and could we agree another date.  With over a dozen people already confirmed/maybe'd/invited, I foresaw an endless flurry of group emails to sort it out.  I remembered someone on Twitter using a calendar tool which allowed everyone to select their preferred dates in a poll-type format, but I couldn't remember the name of the tool. Back to Twitter then, to ask my #PLN (Personal Learning Network) if anyone could suggest/identify this clever tool.  Sure enough, within an hour, I had a response from @telesaur (in Columbus Ohio, no less), who suggested the Google Doodle tool.  

 

Sure enough, that was the tool I remembered, so I set up a poll, listing all the weekend dates in September, and posted the link into the facebook Event page, inviting everyone to select their availability, so that we could identify the most preferred dates.  So far 15 respondees have done just that and we identified 2 possible dates that everyone could attend.  I've taken an executive decision now and decided on Sunday 15th Sept.  There have been no dissensions thus far, so we now can move on to next phase of agreeing the type of gathering, timing and venue... So far, so good!

Now things are taking off and the reunion is beginning to take on a life of its own, fuelled by the enthusiasm and interest of the prospective participants. It's turning into a social event of its own volition!  Someone recently posted some scans of a programme from one of the college productions, whilst some else posted some photos from another production.  But they were all going into the facebook Events and Group pages, not where everyone else (i.e. those not on facebook) could see them or add their own material.  

 

This weekend therefore, I set up a virtual pinboard on Mural.ly, another free social tool in the Cloud  where anyone can post links, photos, scans, text, virtual sticky notes etc.  I've invited folks to visit and add their materials, and I wait with interest to see what the uptake on that is like.

So, there we are. In trying to understand and get to grips with facebook, I've found myself genuinely stretching and developing my social media - and my purely social - skills, whilst connecting and reconnecting with a community of people that I might otherwise have missed.  I've tried to show some leadership, hopefully without being too pushy, and I've invited and nurtured contribution and collaboration from others, across a variety of social media. Oh, and I'm having fun doing it.

What next?  Well, we still need to agree the where, the what and the timing.  Have YOU any ideas as to what other social media and collaboration tools we could be using between now and September, to truly make this a reunion to remember?  All ideas, comments and feedback welcome, as ever. Thanks.

(Why) Should the Genie be put back into the Bottle?

We have in interesting dynamic going on at work.  Yammer's been released into the wild! "Hoorah!", you might think; and that's certainly been the reaction from a proportion of my #PLN (Personal Learning Network) on Twitter when I mentioned it last week - something for which I cannot take any direct responsibility, however.  

It appears that it's sneaked in via a back-door approach that Microsoft exploits, whereby it invites a user or users into the Yammer network via their publicly-available work e-mail address, and then those people invite others into the network, who then join up in the mistaken belief that it's been officially sanctioned.  Indeed, I was invited to join the Yammer community by my Boss!  It now seems that our colleagues in IT have been caught on the hop and that this cloud-based Yammer instance is unsecured and outwith our corporate firewall.

What's really interesting tho' is the speed and enthusiasm with which my colleagues - across the whole business - are jumping onto the bandwagon.  There's an obvious thirst and enthusiasm for the tool and the conversations that are opening up.  So we have a dilemma...

Do we (HR and IT) get all 'command and control' and close it down arbitrarily (we're going to get an internal collaboration tool in our new 'Employee Portal' intranet next year anyway), or do we take a leap of faith, sit back and see how it plays out?  

I reckon that, with some lead-by-example input (this blog being one of them) and some light touch 'don't be a d**k' guidance, this could be a real opportunity to show trust, encourage engagement and - bottom line - see some authentic dialogue, conversations and collaborative activity start to happen.

I think there are going to be some very interesting discussions during the next couple of weeks.

What would you do in the circumstances? What would your corporate/IT/HR view be in the circumstances? I'd love to hear and share your thoughts and opinions with our new, growing internal network - and maybe create some new channels and relationships amongst us all.  At least until we shut it down...

Not So Well-Connected

Did you vote for your new local Police and Crime Commissioner in the UK elections on Thursday evening last week?  Did you know anything about the change in policing accountability or who the candidates standing in your area actually were?  Did you know anything about them, their background, political allegiances, knowledge and skills to take on this responsible role?  

Do you care a) that you do or don't know, b) that only a few people actually seemed to be aware, and c) that those new PCCs who were elected into post only had the mandate of about 7% (average) of the entire population of your area because of the low numbers who turned out to vote?

I ask these questions because I was dismayed by the whole thing!  I had a vague memory of the Government announcing that this change was coming (but can't remember when that announcement was made).  The first I became aware that the election was forthcoming was the arrival of our Polling Cards in the post several weeks ago. We received no election leafleting at home, apart from one candidate two days before the election.  

So I chose to find out for myself - I 'googled' 'Police and Crime Commissioner', found the local authority and government websites, followed the links to the 'Choose My PCC' website, where I was able to find out who the candidates were, their political (or not) affiliations and their election manifestos.  As a result, I had already selected my first - and second - choices before I voted. 

However, it appears that I was one of the few who had enough interest and/or capability to do this!  Regular readers will know that I worked for Sussex Police for 8.5 years, so also know that I have an interest in the subject, but the point of this blog is that the whole event has called into question my - and I suspect a lot of other people's - view that we live in an all-connected, online world, wherein everyone knows everything or can find out the information that they need/want at the drop of mouse-click.

Just because I chose to search out the information and used my online skills and connections to find out the information, it never actually occurred to me that others might not want - nor have the interest and/or skills - to do the same.  

In the world of learning and development, much of the current thrust of the discussion is about how we underestimate our learners' capacity and capability to seek out new information and learning, and how we must create more opportunities for them to assume the ownership of and responsibility for that learning.  It appears that the government and the organisers of the PCC elections made the same assumption and took the same approach with the British public.  However, whilst in L&D, there is a good likelihood that our learners have an interest in either the subject at hand or in their own career/educational development, the Government's miscalculation appears to be in the fact that the public wasn't that interested in the first place, didn't want to invest any time or energy in finding out about the subject and were waiting to be spoon-fed the information in more traditional ways.  

So what was needed here, folks, was a blended approach to the PCC elections - no presumptions of interest or engagement in the topic; no reliance on one source of the information, nor assumptions that one size fitted everyone!  There should have been a push and pull, multi-media approach to the change communication, with relevant, contextual detail available and refreshed regularly.  Kinda like what we're trying to do in L&D nowadays.  They should have come and spoken to us first.

See my latest #storify on how the #pcc elections played out in my #twitter and #facebook communities, at http://storify.com/niallgavinuk/not-so-well-connected.  And please add your thoughts in a comment.

It's not you, it's me!

Er, Hi facebook...? 

Hello?  Ok, it's Niall here, hi.  Look, this is kind of difficult for me, so please bear with me, OK? You know we've had this thing going on for a while, but I haven't been able to devote much time to you or show you much affection?  See, the truth of it is, you've kinda been my bit on the side. I've been seeing others - mostly Twitter and LinkedIn... Oh, and Instagram; and Blogger; and Flickr... 

Look, it's not you, it's me! I've just not felt that either of us were getting much out of the relationship.  You never call: but then, I haven't been visiting much.  So it's kind of a two-way street thing, but with the traffic lights on red at either end. (I like that analogy, I'm having it for later, if that's OK...  No, I'm not trying to be glib or make a joke out of this.)

So, you see, the thing is, I'd like us to try again.  I've been talking to some mutual friends and they think we've still got some kind of future.  I think we've got something to offer each other.  I've been watching you - not in a creepy, peeping-tom kinda way tho' - and I still feel something for you.  You might have noticed me hanging around a bit more, being a bit more attentive than usual?

You seem to be really popular, and that intrigues me.  Oh, and you're looking good... seriously.

So, if it's OK with you, I'm gonna continue organising that 40-Year College reunion in Edinburgh next year, and that meeting up with the guys in London in November, and those conversations that I've started with friends and family.

It's all a bit scary and new for me, so be gentle with me, OK?

So what do you think?  Call me.

Oh, yeah, it's Niall, did I say that...? Ok, bye... bye...

Addendum: This post is a follow-up to last month's "Socially Challenged".