Passions & Purpose

MY VISION:
Sustainability: socially and environmentally; Socially responsible businesses; professional business support organisations able to assist social and commercial entrepreneurs - especially those with the aspiration and the potential to grow; active citizenship; and a society which values diversity - so that as many people as possible can fulfil their potential and their dreams and become all that they can become.

MY MISSION:
My mission is to help individuals and organisations to realise their potential - to become all that they can become - especially in a time of pervasive change.

My experiences, skills and passions have brought me to concentrate on three broad areas:

Corporate Social Responsibility or Sustainable Business Excellence - because socially responsible business can be the most innovative and powerful force for raising social and economic conditions in a global economy.

Diversity: Tackling discrimination and prejudice (on grounds of race / gender / age / religion / sexual orientation / disability) - especially against disabled people, which gets in the way of people realising their potential.

Enterprise: Improving the quality and range of help for small businesses and for community entrepreneurs / non-profit organisations (because small firms and community organisations are major sources of innovation, employment and social cohesion).

Cross-cutting themes include: the need for responsible entrepreneurship in the public, NGO and private sectors; the potential of genuine cross-sectoral partnerships; the importance of stakeholder-engagement; and the need for personal Knowledge-management and effective learning cultures.

FULFILLING THE MISSION:
Working on each of these three themes with organisations in each of the public, private and not-for-profit sectors - and especially through public-private-community partnerships at the interface between the three sectors.

Through a mix of:

• Communications (speaking and writing / media)
• Consultancy
• Chairmanships / committee work.

In each case, through a combination of:

• Some voluntary pro-bono work.
• Some fully commercial.
• Some speculative work somewhere between the first two.

Nowadays, I am particularly looking to do things which:

Will have the greatest possible impact - spreading expertise and good ideas / practice so that successful projects can be taken to scale (because I am growing impatient in my "middle youth" to have more impact and to make a difference).

Will play to my peculiar mix of passions / skills / experiences - especially, the ability to put people from different networks into contact with each other; to enthuse and motivate; to build teams for achieving a cause; to think outside the conventional boxes.

Will help me to continue to learn and to get fresh ideas / insights / experience and skills.

Will enable me to work in eclectic, committed, and inspiring networks / teams where we can have fun.

VALUES AND BELIEFS:
I believe:

• God has purpose(s) for each of us - life involves discovering and freely choosing whether to try and fulfil those purposes.

Each of us can inspire and help others (family, friends, colleagues, those we serve eg as educators, doctors, business advisers, business people, entertainers etc etc) to recognise and fulfil their potential and purposes - or we can dampen / undermine ambitions.
All of us need three things in life: something to do; someone to love; and something to look forward to.

• The dramatic speed of pervasive change is exciting - but for many people can be frightening and disorientating.

In a CNN /Internet-connected world, we are one world - which requires being global and local simultaneously.

We can be in many different communities simultaneously (communties of interest, of identify as well as geographic).

Business - and especially multinational companies - have growing power and with that power comes extra responsibilities.

All three sectors (business / government / community and not-for-profit) remain very much in their respective silos - and yet, there is a blurring of the boundaries between them.

Knowledge and good practice needs to be identified / disseminated / applied faster - not least across the three sectors.

MY VALUES:

1. Respect for others - the Golden Rule of all the world's great religions - "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
2. Equity - fairness and honesty in all one's dealings
3. Passion with purpose - "if a thing's worth doing it is worth's doing properly" - giving of one's best in everything one does - "pain is temporary, quitting is forever!"
4. Integrity: keeping one's promises; respecting confidences - My Mum wrote on her card for my 21st birthday, Polonius's exhortation to his son in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "To thine own self be true and it follows -as night follows day -that you will not be false to anyone"
5. Carpe diem - (seize the day) - both in the sense of Kipling's "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run" - and in the sense of constantly going outside of the comfort zone to gain new insights and experiences;or, you may prefer Gandalf's message to Frodo Baggins at the end of the first movie in the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings: "all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us"
6. Desiderata: don't compare yourself to others - but that does not mean surrendering or having to accept one's lot - make the most of the hand dealt to you - improve those things which can be changed whilst accepting what cannot be changed
7. A humble self-confidence
8. A youthful, playful, joyful, perpetual curiosity
9. Balance: not being too intense or too earnest or over-demanding of others - but rather to have an inner self-calm

I WANT TO BE:

An interpreter of change

Forward-looking and visioning the future

But also intensely practical

As an "outsider" all my life in one way or another, I want to see the barriers (poverty, poverty of desire, of skills, of opportunities; of expectations by others; prejudice) in the way of others fulfilling their potential, minimised.

Equally, as well as being an "outsider," I am also part of a very privileged global elite. As such, I have responsibilities as well as opportunities to contribute in some very specific ways: These include building on previous political experience, and involvement in all three sectors.