My ears are open

I knew I would thrive on coaching – but this much?

I now have a roster of BBC coaching clients in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Salford and London.

I’m developing my niche.   Identifying strengths.  Focussing forward, on what success means for each client and how to get there.   Looking at the whole life experience – body and mind – and embracing “mid-life” as a fresh chance to thrive.

It’s immensely rewarding to keep learning. I’ve just survived my first essay crisis for MAPPCP – that’s the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology at the University of East London.

And this week I discovered how much I enjoy teaching.

Together with fellow BBC coach and marketing whizz Isabella Kornas, I ran my first workshop at the BBC  – an Introduction to Coaching Skills – for 35 members of our Global Women in News network (GWiN). Participants came to the two hour event from as far afield as Salford, Coventry and Norwich.

I talk live on TV for a living, to audiences in the hundreds of thousands, but I still got that “gulp!” moment of looking at this room full of expectant faces and thinking “I hope this works!”

It did.  Everybody brought energy;  the buzz and buy-in was apparent from the very first Q & A.  Two hours later, after Active Listening, Powerful Questions, and Challenging Assumptions, we finished by fielding a host of questions about what it takes to coach, how to develop… and when are we going to do this next?

I’m thrilled to say I’ve already been asked to do more to help deliver coaching training at the BBC.

So this year, my coaching plans are:

Learn more!

Practise more!

And reach out.

Thank you for reading.

The Square and the Tower #network #power

Hierarchies rule but networks innovate.

 

Historian Niall Ferguson’s new book “The Square and the Tower” looks at how these two forms of power have co-existed through the ages.

 

His point?  In recent years we’ve celebrated the ‘network’ in many different guises. The first few examples that spring to mind for me are the Cathedral and the Bazaar – the ideal of the “netizen” – the easiness of eBay – the dawn of the Arab Spring. You’ll have others. We all do.

 

Ferguson asks some hard questions about what network power is actually doing for us, or to us?  What are the historic implications of living in the age of Facebook, Weibo, computer malware and the distributed IS terror network ?

 

First, the theory.  Hierarchies are the stuff of official history – it’s their world that fills our conventional archives – and forms the structure of our government. But think about Google or Netflix or Alibaba – it’s the networks which now spill into the smallest corners of our daily lives.

 

Ferguson gallops through the centuries. He tells us the first “networked era” followed the introduction of the printing press to Europe in the late fifteenth century and lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. The second – our own time – dates from the 1970s.  

 

This book is his attempt to give due attention to the buzz of the networks, the public square: because we’re in a phase of history where we can really see their power – for good or for ill.

 

In Western terms, he sums up some of the new network powers as FANG – we’re talking about Facebook, Amazon (and Apple), Netflix and Google. The internet age was heralded in idealistic terms. It could / should have been about openness, transparency, democracy, freedom.  But Ferguson focusses on data gathering, commercial power, and the huge income inequalities between the owners and users of the Silicon valley networks.

 

“The global social network is itself owned by an exclusive network of Silicon Valley insiders”.

 

It’s worth thinking again about the question, who profits? And does it have to be that way?

 

He contrasts EU attempts to tax and to regulate (but not really innovate) and then looks east to the Chinese version of the big networks –  BAT – Baidu, Alibaba, TenCent. He told me today on BBC World TV that “the Chinese got the internet right” : he sees the Chinese authorities embracing successful network formulas (as opposed to accepting the actual Googles and Facebooks on their own terms), building their own versions, and using the data they bring – not least for the surveillance of dissent.  He adds that we underrate Chinese political power structures. They work laterally more than we realise, utilising the leverage of “mentoring” relationships, not just centralised hierarchical structures.

 

****

There’s a lot more. These are just a few of the points I’ve underlined in a 48 hour reading marathon.

 

The backlash against the big social networks. AS NF puts it, Facebook or Fakebook, Twitter or Twister?  EU states are saying Google and Facebook should censor the unacceptable. Should they?

 

Just how fragile networks can be.  The international financial network was nearly brought down by the failure of one investment bank in 2008. The global computer system was badly hacked by the WannaCry ransomware this May.

 

The networking of terrorism. ISIS learned from Al Qaeda, not to let itself be decapitated or throttled as happened with the US-led Anaconda Strategy in Iraq. Go viral, be networked, go from top-down control to cells to calling for ‘lone wolf’ rampages.  

 

And he touches – but not much more – upon the advance of AI. From carbon-based neural networks to cerebral silicon power? That’s a whole other story, being written by a whole lot of others right now.

 

*****

To me, it makes for gloomy reading.

 

Other books that have impressed me on the power of networks, celebrate their potential, or their proven worth as human safety nets. I’m thinking, for example, about Robert Putnam mourning the decline of community networks in “Bowling Alone” and “Our Kids” or Clay Shirky celebrating the revolutionary impact of online networks in “Here Comes Everybody”.  

 

Is there still a place for idealism? Ferguson quotes the question, ‘can the “good actors” join together in a new kind of geopolitical network, pitting their ‘webcraft’ against the bad actors?’. Some current thinkers like Anne Marie Slaughter hope the US will gradually “find the golden mean of network power”. He thinks that’s unlikely. 

 

When I interviewed Niall Ferguson today on BBC World TV, I put it to him that I feel he finishes in praise of hierarchy  – having warned us the networks are just as controlling, just as dangerous, and perhaps less accountable. Here’s another of his lines:

 

“The world today frequently resembles a giant network on the verge of a cataclysmic outage”.

 

But perhaps the quote that will stay with me longest from ‘The Square and the Tower’ is this, the three rules of computer security he tells us were devised by the NSA cryptographer Robert Morris Sr:

 

“RULE ONE: Do Not Own a Computer.

RULE TWO: Do Not Power it On.

RULE THREE: Do not use it.”’

 

I’d rather not be defeatist. But this book doesn’t help!  

 

Skiers with tennis rackets. #Coachblog #Coaching

I start training on Wednesday to become an executive coach.

I am excited and I am nervous because I am so keen to do this. The practice of “coaching” has fired my imagination.

What questions do “Women at the Top” ask? #FTWomen

Today after work I dropped into the Financial Times “Women at the Top” conference – held at a smart London hotel.  There was a ballroom filled with 250 women –  and an agenda that rolled swiftly through stories about leadership, recruitment, tech, equal pay and more.  You may be aware we’re having our own lively debate at the BBC about equal pay for equal work, and how to shake up our culture to make it truly inclusive.  Here are a few disparate quotes that popped out at me from the speakers I heard today.

**

We’re here to fix the system not the women.

**
I tell my new female staff to play to win rather than play by the rules.  Arm yourselves with facts and go have the (pay) conversation.

**
It’s not just about pay. It’s about career progression.

**

The most critical thing for me has been having a series of sponsors who believed in me more than I did.  Ask yourself today, who are you sponsoring? Who are you taking a chance on?

**
Build your brand by making four things clear:  What am I good at? What are my values?
How do I work?  And what can I  do for you?

**

Editing is key. Not simplifying but making it simpler, smarter, shorter.

**
We know the men at the top tend to look for leaders who look like them (says one exec).

We found there is no “success bias” but there is an “application bias” (says another).
**
I have had so many women say “you know what, I’m good on the money, I’m happy”.  I have my men in here every three months saying “I’m great, when can I expect my next bump?” They come back again and again. It wears a manager down. (This from a successful female tech CEO).

**

We need to give middle school girls real concrete examples of what is available to them. Get them young!

**

I never wanted to outsource my life in order to achieve my career goals.

**
I’ve been rethinking. I need to do less and achieve more

**

Nothing happens without energy – put on your oxygen mask before you help others

**

Always say “Yes!”

 

Smiles for Sale – “Lotus” – a novel by Lijia Zhang

LOTUS is the first novel of Chinese writer Lijia Zhang, who began her working life at 16 in a factory that produced intercontinental missiles, taught herself English by listening to the music of The Carpenters, and now works as a journalist and social commentator in Beijing.

I’ll be interviewing her on Monday on Impact on BBC World News (1330 BST).

“Lotus” is about prostitutes in steamy southern Shenzhen, the city just north of Hong Kong. What they are like, why they do it, and how they came to be there. Zhang says it’s a myth to think the lives of all sex workers are all misery.   At best, they can earn and live for themselves. But at worst – and what an awful worst –  they’re raped and constantly exploited. And that is how many begin.

Like Lijia Zhang’s own grandmother. The novel is rooted in a story revealed on a deathbed, the family secret of her grandmother’s past, sold to a brothel when she was just fourteen. 

Olivia Sudjic’s “Sympathy” – Alice in her online Wonderland.

When does life online shift from broader horizons to tunnel vision?

A new novel called “Sympathy” sends us tumbling down the rabbit hole like Alice. And like her, it makes me feel somewhat nauseous. I might even have to say I dislike the story. That’s not to say it isn’t good – and powerful.   I look forward to interviewing its author Olivia Sudjic on BBC World this week. 

“Revenge of the ‘Deplorables'” – a good read

My day has been thrown off course by a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Revenge of the ‘Deplorables‘” is an excellent long read – asking what’s behind the growing distrust in government institutions and conventional media.

The report asks whether Brexit and Trump are “a triumph of democracy or a threat to it?”

The headline is the EIU’s downgrading of the US from a full to a “flawed” democracy in its Democracy Index 2016 but with this key caveat – the election of Mr Trump as US president “was in large part a consequence of the longstanding problems of democracy in the US.” It’s been a long time coming.

 

“No Need for Geniuses”. A rather surprising book about history and science.

I interviewed Steve Jones at the Write on Kew literary festival on Sunday. He is Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London and from the evidence of his books a very curious author.  

He’s written extensively on evolution and genetics – how did we come to be who we are? – and this book No Need For Geniuses: Revolutionary Science in the Age of the Guillotine  – sweeps through a series of fantastic stories about an extraordinary moment in history, a time and a place, revolutionary France, when a host of academic explorers made tremendous strides – across scientific fields from biology, chemistry and physics to astronomy, meteorology, and ologies I didn’t know existed (like metrology, which has literally changed our world).

When we think about Paris we often think about the arts. That is literally only half the story. As Jones put it, “The scientific landscape of the French capital is, without doubt, the richest in the world”.

Walking the talk on #Diversity at Work

“Walk the talk”. “Turn the dial”. “We need to hardwire diversity”.

 

And – “You can’t improve on what you can’t measure”. “People can’t shy away from the data”.

 

These are some of my takeaways from the BBC Diversity and Inclusion in Media event I hosted on 15th September in the stately venue of the Old Broadcasting House council chamber. Essential ingredients : some inspiring talkers, audience interaction, and a networking session with cream tea laid on.

 

Anne Bulford Deputy Director General said she was committed to “a truly open BBC at all levels”. By 2020, she said, “if we get this right, we will have a workforce at least as diverse as any in the industry”.  Managers must “visibly lead by example”.

 

“Diversity” for our speakers was about gender, about disability, about ethnicity and about LGBT inclusion too. A question from the audience about enabling people who are economically disadvantaged also prompted quite a few nods. (I commented that “class still matters” but I don’t think that was the PC term for me to use.)

 

Toby Mildon, Diversity Lead for the BBC Design and Engineering division, gave us the tag line “Diversity includes everyone”. Later in the session Frances Duffy of Capgemini said that has to include the white middle aged man as well.  Toby strongly underlined one of the session’s key points for me: there’s a lot of talk about D&I (i.e. Diversity and Inclusion) but one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other. It’s a warning I’ve also heard brilliantly made by the writer and corporate activist Margaret Heffernan. But I’m not sure it is taken to heart by managers who appoint staff – you need to pull together a diverse workforce as step one – And ALSO make individuals feel valued and encouraged to speak out, to collaborate, and to strive to raise the game of the workforce.

 

Toby said it’s sometimes overlooked that the BBC is a technical organisation – it needs to reach out to remind potential recruits in design and engineering and tech just how big an employer it is. He talked about BBC experimentation with blind skills recruiting. He said it gets results. Candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds are three times as likely to be shortlisted. And he revealed that tweaking the wording in job descriptions has led to more women applying.

 

A good number of the panellists and organisations represented in the room are already signed up to the Ten Steps programme of WISE – Women in Science and Engineering. Suzy Firkin described it as “sort of a pledge programme but more – we give you the tools and techniques to make a difference”. More than 150 organisations are now signed up and subscribing to WISE. Suzy revealed their feedback on the easiest and toughest steps to take. The hardest, once again this year, is “educate leaders”.

 

One of the companies in the room that’s already an enthusiastic supporter of WISE is Virgin Media. Jo Dutton is now director of Strategy, Insight and Data for the Customer Division. She talked about new efforts to recruit and to retain diverse talent. Among those, getting genuinely diverse interview panels. Was there resistance to that shift, I asked her? No – she’s been overwhelmed with volunteers.

 

Rachel Higham is MD, CIO, BT group – working in what’s traditionally an overwhelmingly male environment. She has a great PowerPoint on her TechWomen initiative – what’s been done and what still needs doing. The women in the programme have four points of help – a buddy, a mentor, a coach AND a sponsor. These are all different roles. But it’s a two way street: the programme requires that you “Drive Your Development”.  She says they are aiming for 30% women executives by 2020. Too many are still “stuck in middle management treacle”!  She advocates a “full life cycle” approach – all the way up to getting frank feedback in departure interviews, and aiming to make those who leave into either advocates or rejoiners.

 

“We want to mainstream diversity” said Nina Bhagwat, Off Screen Diversity Executive for Channel Four. She talked about the creative AND business case for doing so. Following the channel’s coverage of the 2012 Paralympics, this year she said “two thirds of our presenting team is disabled”. Offscreen targets include 50% apprenticeships and 30% work placements.

 

Aleya Karim talked about the significant changes made at McKinsey, as part of the 30% club aimed at getting a minimum of 30% women on FTSE-100 boards. She noted the importance of gender diversity targets being included in board updates. Aleya’s presentation also followed up on Nina’s point about efficacy: “Diverse leadership teams perform better financially.”

 

Our final panellist Frances Duffy works for tech consultants Capgemini as VP and Regional HR director, North and West Europe and UK Country Director. She talked frankly about how hard it is to shift the dial. She said the message has to be – to the middle aged white guy too – one of “active inclusion”. Capgemini started its new programme to that end only six months ago. But already in a diversity survey of the entire company population, she said there was 50% response and a lot of suggestions for change.

 

Hayley Sudbury then brought us a demo – of her new Werkin smartphone app designed to gather data, talent and enthusiasm within an organization to trouble-shoot all sorts of challenges – large and small.

 

She talked about using your “sparks” better – HR speak that’s new to me – and that’s my final takeaway from a session with a lot of fresh thinking to offer.

 

Why Jo Cox was the best kind of politician.

I will remember Jo on her boat with a baby and a smile.

We’d been introduced by a mutual friend who used to work in the White House. When I headed back to London after four years living in the States, he said “there’s this fantastic woman you just have to meet”. And so in October 2011 we did – on her lovely vintage houseboat on the Thames. We talked about babies and boats and travelling the world, about being working parents, and about what professional women could do to help others coming up behind them – as she did.

I first reported on politics for the BBC in Westminster back in 1990, and have spoken to dozens and dozens of politicians since in the UK, the US and beyond. I’m always fascinated with what drives them.

With Jo, this was very clear. She was in politics not for what she could be, but for what she could do. She was smart, strategic, lovable – yes, she could have been a cabinet minister or a party leader. But she really was driven to make the world a better place. And to make us behave more decently.

She was passionate but positive. Something else to hold onto in an age of politicians “full of sound and fury”.

“Let’s have a cuppa sometime” she tweeted me last month. Oh if only