The ripple effect. A butterfly flutters its wings that ends up changing the weather on the other side of the world.
Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen
by Dee Cowburn
The tiny changes no one, even you, notice. The marginal gains. Setting your desk up slightly different. Replacing one coffee with a decaf. Getting up five minutes earlier to read or spend time staring out of the window before the day begins.
Compounded, these things add up.
Any self-help book will tell you that. You only need to follow Tim Ferriss (Four-Hour Work Week) or James Clear (Atomic Habits) to know these things.
But what no-one tells you is how easy it is to forget.
To drop the five minutes. To get lost in your head and not notice your environment.
Trying to think your way out of chaos, without realising that doesn’t work, because you don’t have peers immediately to hand in the office to bounce thoughts off.
I know walking into a different room at the Commissioners office to have a rant, or talk about my weekend, or test a press statement with someone in the know, helped me more than I could quantify at the time.
So, being part of a freelance consultant’s group, where we bounce thoughts, ideas and frustrations off each other, is invaluable.
I knew that and I really value it.
But to come together for a shared learning day, that started as a thought, and became a reality was and is immeasurable. Huge kudos to Ruby Bhattal and Darren Caveney for making it happen. And to Adam Driver of Authentic Comms Strategic Consultancy for facilitating the day marvelously.
This is because what I gained on that day was solidarity, a sense of community, transferred from WhatsApp into a room of peers, with huge talents, and a willingness to share their learning and experience.
It resulted in, not only a window into other people’s worlds, but a sense of connection.
On the challenges consultants face, the opportunities, the frustrations, and the different worlds we inhabit.
From how to communication with younger people in ways that hadn’t even occurred to me, by Rebecca Roberts, Thread & Fable. She outlined how to reach youth audiences, and challenging stereotypes.
Hayley James, from Hayley James Communications Ltd, outlined how internal communications matters and what models to follow, again hugely beneficial to me as this isn’t something I am experienced in. Through to Alex Waddington, Whetstone Communications, and Alan Oram, Alive With Ideas, around AI, who to read (Ethan Mollick), are you a Centaur or Cyborg?
Orlo were brilliant delivering a session on how they horizon scan and measure trust sentiment among many other things for organisations, which really matters day to day, not just in a crisis. And thanks to them for hosting us for the day.
Then Russell Cartwright, Cartwright Training and Consultancy, about behaviour change and how to achieve it, using bin collections as an example. That led to a discussion with Darren Caveney and James Morton in my group about wheelie bins, and how Birmingham Council has been collecting rubbish during the city’s bin strike, it’s just the recycling which hasn’t.
Which randomly led me to recall the case of Stephanie Slater, kidnapped by Michael Sams in the nineties, and kept in a makeshift coffin, using a wheelie bin.
Darren said that my randomness at recalling such things was creativity. Which had never occurred to me. But did make me very happy because, to say I work in the world of writing, I never think of myself as being creative.
I do always recall certain facts, usually about news events, which can and do captivate me, I regularly wake my other half up in the night to tell him my theory about the latest news story and the specific agendas influencing said story behind the scenes. That I believe are shaping the agendas. I look at news stories like a jigsaw puzzle, how was it written, shaped, influenced, angles, why are they there, what led to that specific point, what could a news backgrounder look like and why? I can’t just read the news and never could, even back in the day when my uncle used to drop the Coventry Evening Telegraph at our house on his way home. I loved it then and I love it now.
Now I wouldn’t have gone off on this random train of thought and attached any meaning to it without the shared learning day. It mattered and it has had a ripple effect.
So much so, we are planning another one and widening it out to lots more people.
The quality and depth and breadth of learning was right up there with the conferences you go to.
To end the day, the excellent Eleanor Stanley, Articulate, who does coaching as well as many other health related communications, helped us identify our priorities and what our obstacles were. It was a whistlestop tour, but it was brilliant. Because I identified what was important to me and why, and along with Alex Waddington, we made ourselves accountable.
In fact it was down to a WhatsApp on the group this morning by Alex that started this blog post. He had written something relating to that day and I thought that by writing it, he had started another ripple effect.
He made my day with what he had written, I was so pleased for him, I started this blog post, which I am now sharing with you.
Another learning day will follow, with valuable relevant learning for all communications professionals who come, and the ripple effect of that will be felt much wider than the one we just did.
And it all starts with an idea, a thought, a what if?, a desire to be part of something bigger than yourself. To share learning and ideas in an egoless environment.
The amount of times I heard on that day, You Probably Already Know This Stuff, such was the humility in that room. We didn’t know it at all, and the people delivering are and were at the top of their game, they just didn’t brag or assume they were! I felt grateful to be learning from them!
Real intelligence to my mind is doing stuff for other people because it makes you feel great and is a kind thing to do.
That is what Darren has created with the consultant WhatsApp community, along with the comms0point2 community and the UnAwards. Because if you are decent, authentic, genuinely want to help people and don’t have an ego driving it, you create magic.
The shared learning day was magic. And long may that magic continue to have a ripple effect.
Dee Cowburn is owner of Dee Cowburn Communications Ltd, a media and crisis communications consultancy. You can say hello on LinkedIn here.
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