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So, what exactly do you do?

I’m frequently asked “what do you do, Sarah?”.

It hasn’t always been an easy question to answer.

Largely because what I do today has arrived as a fusion of many different elements of a corporate career, diverse life experience and rather an extraordinary twist of fate (but if I’m completely honest, I guess I always feared pigeonholing myself).

The short answer to the above question is this: I’m a speaker for a living, a mentor for a purpose, and a champion of change for rural communities.

I have always been passionate about empowering the next generation to step up and play a more active role in shaping the future of their community, through whatever means I can engage them (industry peak bodies, sporting clubs, schools, community groups, government).

Underpinning all of this — and probably the greatest imprint on my narrative, full stop — is my upbringing in rural Australia.

When I returned to my roots in Eyre Peninsula SA in 2012 and saw how the region had contracted and communities had declined since my departure as a teenager, I felt a strong need to do something about it.

It was at this time in my life that I began to view my professional skillset through a social impact lens. It made me reframe my perspective as a mentor, and really challenged me to think deeper about what community development actually meant.

So what does that make me?

My name is Sarah Prime, and I’m a Social Entrepreneur. I specialise in rural contraction, decline and exodus, and am a champion of change for rural revitalisation.

Lateral logic, critical thinking, systems thinking, human centred design – I thrive on this stuff – and I use whatever I learn to empower others to recognise and strive for their human potential, then I attempt to show them how they can apply it to a cause greater than the individual.

If you hadn’t already picked up on it, I am on a mission to create a social revolution.

Not the kind with guns, but the kind that empowers rural communities to move beyond an autopilot holding pattern of survival, toward a time of sustainable social and economic prosperity.

I would love nothing more than for people who don’t live in rural areas, to understand why these places are still ‘relevant’, and how dependent on them they actually are.

I work hard to increase empathy within and for small rural communities, because I firmly believe they deserve to be recognised as valuable contributors to society and deliberate, liveable destinations (as opposed to relics of a bygone era).

I strive to position small towns to benefit from the great social capital and lifestyle opportunities they offer, by challenging people in higher population densities to reimagine their sense of place, recognise their power of choice, and move to a rural area so that they can see what they are missing out on.

Most of all, I want to see rural communities revitalise from within. That’s why I spend a lot of time and energy teaching people in those communities problem-solving from the perspective of innovation and entrepreneurship, and promoting the critical need to reinvest in a value system of volunteerism (a powerful tool in developing community resilience and social cohesion).

If they can make their own community more resilient and sustainable through their efforts to adapt to change, then I will happily offer them a platform to promote their ideas and solutions, to create shared value for rural communities right around the world.

Because if we do this, it will serve to create a Global Rural Community that grows smarter, stronger and more agile every single day.

I’m sure to many this will seem idealistic (things often do, from the sidelines). But I’m here in the thick of it, and I’m not perturbed by anyone else’s judgements or expectations.

I do what I do because I feel a sense of urgency to prevent more rural communities from reaching a tipping point of no return. And because I genuinely love it.

I am, however, open to domain knowledge, experience, and generosity of spirit that other people might like to contribute to this journey I’m on.

So if you share any of the same passions or ideals – I’d love to connect.

If you know of a rural community that has completely reinvented itself, reinvigorated, revitalised or repositioned itself to thrive once again, I would really love to hear about them. Please leave me your comments at the end of this post, or contact me directly via email at sarah@sarahprime.com.

And if you’re looking for a speaker on the topic of championing change; passing a legacy on to the next generation; or reimagining the potential of rural communities; hit me up (because this is what pays the bills and makes it possible for me to keep this journey going)!

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read this. If you’re feeling curious, why not scroll back up the screen and enter your email address to subscribe and see where the story goes?

Rural innovation looks different

There is a saying where I’m from which says ‘the shorter the scrub, the friendlier the people’. I believe it originates from an Eyre Peninsula local known affectionately as ‘Scuzz’ Davey.

The short scrub (short trees) is describing a low rainfall area, or marginal agricultural country. Due to the harsh and unforgiving country, the pioneers who settled those areas had to be very innovative and resourceful in order to make a living off of the land.

^{Young boy on farm on Eyre Peninsula South Australia, 1921 (image courtesy of State Library of SA}
^{SLSA PRG 280/1/28/85 Public Domain)}

The reason these marginal areas were thought so friendly, was that the people based there didn’t take anything for granted.

They understood fully, the benefit of having others come into their community — new knowledge, new collaborators, new bodies in the labour force, and the resultant increase in social and economic activity in the community.

More families in a community meant a higher likelihood of prosperity in future years, so every passerby was welcomed with open arms and hosted with generosity of spirit. They were considered an invaluable absolute asset.

People based in these communities also knew that they had to work together with their neighbours and share ideas and resources in order to survive.

Relationship building and collaboration was in fact a vital skillset.

The shorter the scrub, the friendlier the people

The above phrase implies that relationship building, collaboration and resourcefulness are part of the legacy that has continued to be passed down through the generations of rural communities in Australia.

Let’s look in a bit more detail, at what resourcefulness looks like.

In rural areas, going to work each day means travelling a significant distance away from your home base. It’s important to make sure you have everything with you that you might need to get yourself out of a spot of bother during the day (because it’s a long way back to the workshop if something breaks down, and a huge loss of productivity).

^{This is my late grandfather, Con Ortlepp on our family farm near Darke Peak SA}

In my grandfather’s era, a farmer could fix almost anything with a pair of pliers and some fencing wire (in the current era, perhaps the emergency repair kit also contains zip-ties and some duct tape).

With these things onboard and a little ingenuity, a farmer could adapt, repair, improve or repurpose something.

And when you are geographically isolated from service providers, you need to be able to employ a sense of ingenuity, use your problem solving skills and go through a process of trial and error until you get things functioning in the way you need them to.

^{Fences are far from the only thing that can be fixed with fencing wire and a pair of pliers.}

Necessity is the mother of invention

In rural areas, being able to innovate is crucial to remaining productive. And of course, it is not only those working in agriculture who are problem solving and innovating as an ordinary part of rural life — it could be any household or business, simply doing what needs to be done in order to get a job finished.

People often associate innovation with tech companies, but of course, innovation can take place in a variety of shapes and forms (and certainly in a range of different entities and environments). Rural innovation does not usually look like a tech company.

The level of innovation of a region is traditionally measured by the volume of patents that are registered. In my humble opinion, such a statistic is a misleading indicator of innovation – especially in rural regions.

What happens to all of those ingenious fixes and innovative solutions above? How often do you think they are registered as patents? My guess is, rarely.

^{How many people with innovative solutions to common problems go to the extent of registering a patent (whether a rural region, or anywhere for that matter)? Logic would dictate, probably only those seeking to commercialise it.}

To me, this is just one of the ways that we overlook innovation. We don’t always give it credit for what it is, because innovation in rural areas doesn’t look like innovation in other areas.

What else might we be overlooking?

What are the broader impact and opportunities here?

Think for a moment about a farmer who solves a problem on-the-fly, to get a piece of machinery up and running in a race against the weather.

Now, let’s try to imagine how many other operators on the 570-odd million farms in the world would have faced that exact same problem at some point in time.

The existence of shared problems implies that there would be a demand for the solution created, if it were available on the market. And shared solutions lead to shared value and thus, community impact.

There for the act of sharing solutions has the potential to catalyse new economic activity, something that rural areas experiencing contraction and decline, are in desperate need of.

^{First single furrow stump jumping plough known as ‘the Vixen’ made by Mr RB Smith
Image courtesy of State Library of South Australia SLSA:B 64256, Public Domain}

Greater productivity has the potential to lead to employment creation >> payment of wages stimulates spending >> spending impacts housing markets, schools, doctors surgeries, supermarkets and nearly everything else in a rural community.

Innovation and entrepreneurship makes the money go ’round. Shared value makes it profit with purpose, an ecosystem as opposed to an egosystem.

What If . . . ?

Let us ponder for a moment, what would happen if every modern farm vehicle (tractor, header, truck) had a 3D printer in it, which could reproduce solutions generated in a days work?

In an ideal world, these could be mass produced locally and sold anywhere in the world. What might something like that do in terms of economic stimulus for a small rural community, if it were to create new and diversified revenue streams and employment opportunities?

Here’s another idea. Imagine if every solution created and printed by a farmer could be uploaded to a shared value platform, downloadable by anyone with a mobile phone?

^{3D printers are much smaller and more cost effective than they were a few short years ago.}

In the age of precision ag, big data and multiple screens in farm machines that are connected to global satellites, such an idea is a far cry from science fiction.

The OECD released a report back in 2014 called ‘Innovation and Modernising the Rural Economy’ in which it identified that the future prosperity of rural regions will be driven by enterprise, innovation and new technologies, tailored to specific markets and applied to new and old industries.

It said:

Local actors must come together to build an understanding of how best to use these resources, given [the] constraints.
^{OECD Innovation and Modernising the Rural Economy (2014)}

People based in rural areas need to recognise that their ability to problem solve and find innovative solutions to complex problems is a unique strength.

^{‘Water harvesting’ is an innovative solution to a common challenge faced by marginal farming areas. My husband’s family farm learned how to build the above water catchment by talking to farmers in other regions and learning from them: what they did; what worked; and what they wished they had done differently. In a low rainfall area, they now have the ability to store 5 million litres of water to feed stock on seven farms.}

It could be that a rural persons fortitude and resilience – the ability to find a way to ‘get on with it’ – is an asset that they have not yet realised they can leverage (not just for their own benefit, but perhaps also creating a significant impact on their community).

It is important to reframe the narrative on rural areas from a discussion of their assumed shortcomings, to a discussion of their advantages and explore how best to maximise the existing opportunities in rural areas.
OECD Innovation and Modernising the Rural Economy (2014)

Finding shared value approaches to problem solving is a passion project of mine. The objective of the Global Rural Community platform that I am currently developing, is to provide a place where people can upload innovative solutions that they have found to common rural challenges, so that rural communities everywhere can benefit.

^{Shared Value infographic source: elevatelimited.com}

My hope is that an open-source system of shared value can ultimately help communities become stronger through increased knowledge, and more resilient by tapping into a diverse range of information, experience and ideas that have already been through the process of trial and error.

If this article left you reminiscing about a particular unique solution to a common rural challenge that you’ve seen, or perhaps a quick fix that was developed in the paddock to get you through the day, I dare you to share a comment below (double points if you include a photo)!

What shapes us, and the places we live?

It’s no secret that I had a country upbringing, or that I believe that growing up on a family farm and going to a school with less than 30 kids is something shaped me as a person, more so than any other experience in my life.

I talk about that part of my life openly, as well as my return to a rural area as an adult.

What I don’t usually talk about, are those other experiences in between. I usually skip over the boring part in the middle of my story, where I had my corporate career.

I guess I don’t really see it as a point of interest that I worked as a corporate governance auditor. There aren’t a bunch of humorous anecdotes about being a systems and operations specialist in a business advisory special projects team in a public accounting firm. And I can’t really entertain the masses with my transition into economic development or taking on the gig as set up CEO for Regional Development Australia for Far North Queensland and Torres Strait region.

They were all really important life experiences, but they don’t make for a great keynote or feature article, if you catch my drift.

However it hit me just recently, that those less ‘less interesting’ life experiences have actually helped me to develop great clarity around the kind of belief systems and resultant behaviours that shape people and communities.

And that experience is something I draw on every single day.

In a former life

Whilst living in Cairns I had the wonderful opportunity to be involved in an initiative of the Cairns Chamber of Commerce called ‘Young Chamber’, which had been commissioned to support and develop future leaders and business owners across the region.

I chaired that Taskforce for around five years, and became somewhat infatuated with the concept of securing the future of the region through an investment in its people.

Following that role, I naturally gravitated into the role of Mentor to up and coming community leaders and business people alike.

Young Chamber (Cairns Chamber of Commerce Taskforce) circa 2010
Back: Scott Pearson, Nick Bernabei Front: Me, Karen Duffin, Louise Zupp, Andrea Ambrosio

I’d always had a firm belief that there was little point throwing money at projects and infrastructure to develop industry if we didn’t equip the next generation with the skills that would be required to drive them forward, so mentoring seemed like an obvious thing to do.

But as I continued in various mentoring capacities, I found that I actually had a bit of a knack for helping people to recognise their unique attributes and motivating them to discover the potential that they didn’t realise was within themselves.

Mentoring ‘the next generation’ became a filter through which I viewed the world and most things within it.

Seeing through a Next Gen filter

When I returned to my roots in Eyre Peninsula in 2012 after having been away for over a decade, to find that the region had contracted significantly – many communities had reached a tipping point of no return – I saw the problem through my Next Gen filter.

I clearly remember thinking “who will pass the legacy of these regions on to the next generation, now that there is no one left to fight for them?
How will kids ever know how special these communities once were – or that they ever existed at all?”

This photo was taken 5km from the farm where I live. Wharminda School was one of three schools within a 50km radius which closed down in a ten year period.

This realisation ultimately led to me establishing a mentoring framework called Champions Academy in Eyre Peninsula, South Australia.

The name Champions Academy came from a philosophy I had developed, that ‘a Champion is a person whose actions motivate and inspire others, and leave a legacy’.

At its very heart, Champions Academy is about teaching people how to become Champions of change, by helping them to recognise their human potential and motivating them to apply it to a cause greater than themselves.

It was an initiative designed to encourage people to step up, lead by example as role models and active contributors to their community.

The program began by teaching people who were already actively engaged in local sporting clubs (which I believed, were one of the last remaining incubators of community leadership in rural areas), how to reinvest in their region through a value system of volunteerism.

An image of the work being done by one of the participants during a CA Club session.

I set out to demonstrate the importance of giving back to community, without the expectation of receiving something in return.

The process began with the objective of teaching the vital life skill of setting aside self-serving agendas and personal biases, to effect change for a greater good.

Central to those teachings was the impact of club culture on sustainability; and the significance of the transition of knowledge, stories and values from one generation to the next.

The critical learning objective was understanding the importance of passing information on before the need for it becomes critical, to prevent not just operational club knowledge, but community legacies from being lost.

During a CA Club session, local community member Gavin Masters explains the role that a sporting clubs inadvertently plays as a vital support network to the wider community.

I will be forever grateful to Ports Football & Netball Club for willingly becoming the ‘guinea pig’ for the Champions Academy pilot program, and to those clubs across Eyre Peninsula who have joined the program since.

Scaling impact

Within three years the Champions Academy sporting club program commercialised and has now transitioned into schools.

Graduates of the original Champions Academy program are now heading up the delivery of our new pilot at St Josephs School in Port Lincoln, where we have just spent the year working with 237 Year 3’s, 4’s, 9’s and 10’s.

Students of St Josephs School in Port Lincoln developing their problem solving abilities during a CA Schools session in 2019.

The transition into schools has added the most interesting layer to our program design, giving us new learned experience and and an evidence base for further design and decision-making.

It has also created an impetus for the next evolution in my mentorship model.

It was a no brainer

It had always been clear to me, that instead of simply developing skills and awareness in the next generation of leaders, we as the current business and community leaders, actually have a lot to learn from them.

I firmly believe that the complex challenges that communities now face are unlikely to be solved by conventional thinking (but unfortunately, conventional thinking is what decisions are based on, much of the time).

What I mean by that is, sadly the boundaries, policies, rules and regulations that govern our business, industry and government leaders, limit individual creativity and independent thought processes.

So often, the side effect is that people’s perspectives are unconsciously framed by a collective negativity bias and pressure to conform – which is really great at helping us to identify all the reasons why something won’t work and shouldn’t be attempted, but not great for identifying solutions to overcome challenges.

We have to consciously choose not to default to that kind of thinking. And believe it or not, that is quite hard work.

A student of St Josephs School in Port Lincoln learning how break default thinking patterns and use the part of his brain where strategic decision-making and problem solving happen.

In my experience, the younger the subject, the less barriers there are to ideation, innovation, iteration and having a crack at creative approaches to overcoming challenges.

With this in mind, it seems there is much that children can teach us through their perspective of problem solving.

What can we learn from kids?

In 2019 an idea that I had been percolating for some time began to take physical shape.

During my Westpac Social Change Fellowship I began to wonder “what would happen if I could teach kids some design thinking frameworks and guiding principles of entrepreneurship and innovation, and they applied it to local challenges and opportunities”?
So I decided to find out.

With the wonderful support of an inspired, motivated group Champions Academy program graduates, a $10,000 investment by the District Council of Kimba and a bunch of connections, I took a leap.

I invited 25 schools across Eyre Peninsula to send two students from every year level, from Year 3 through to Year 10, to work with a group of 27 guest mentors that I would fly into the region from my own networks, to learn basic human centred design and shared value approaches to problem solving.

Top Row: Josh Leung, Alexandra Procter, Gavin Myers, Tanya Dupagne, David Fleming, Liz Jackson, Alex Thomas, Harry Carpenter, Simone Bertram Middle Row: Alex Bruhn, Pascal Seibold, Zali Yager, Andrew Griffiths, Ruth Schubert, Michelle Todorov, Taofiq Huq, Alissa Nightingale, Sarah Bascomb Bottom Row: Me, Cheryl Mangan, Mikhara Ramsing, Chad Renando, Elise Stephenson, Matt Dodd, Gretel Sneath, Matt & Meagan Lienert, Luke Spajic

These amazing guest mentors (or as I called them, ‘Game Changers’) included Westpac Scholars; Agrifutures Rural Womens Award recipients; Alumni of the Australian Financial Review Women of Influence; Churchill Fellows; Australian of the Year finalists as well as other award winning thought leaders. Among them were UX designers, space-edge computing experts, social entrepreneurs, engineers, leading business minds and trailblazing innovators from an incredible range of industries and professions.

Following a $1,000 investment from each of the Local Government Areas of Eyre Peninsula, Champions Academy’s Next Gen of Eyre was delivered: two intensive days where mixed tables of eight students worked under the guidance of a dedicated mentor, to understand what makes communities function and explore collaborative approaches to overcoming complex challenges that are impacting on Eyre Peninsula.

Next Gen of Eyre in action: a room filled with eager anticipation and optimism for the future.

As a part of this process, students developed a local and global perspective of the impact of the decisions we all make on a daily basis. They found a voice to share what they were excited about; what they were concerned about; and what they wanted for the future of their community.

We quickly realised that the Next Gen of Eyre was only the beginning of an ongoing conversation, which we will continue facilitate between the youth demographic and community leaders of Eyre Peninsula.

We see our role at Champions Academy as acting as a conduit for the transition of the aforementioned critical knowledge and insights, which not only helps local government to engage with the youth demographic and integrate their perspective into strategic planning and decision-making, but also gives the next generation a sense of purpose and license to play an active role in shaping the future of the community that they will grow up in.

Following on from the Next Gen of Eyre we will report back to councils with the qualitative and quantitative data that we have collected. We will also return to schools to foster the connections that we have made and keep the conversation going about what we – as individuals as well as collectively – can do about the challenges and opportunities across Eyre Peninsula.

Where from here?

In 2020 all schools who participated in the Next Gen of Eyre will be invited to take up the opportunity to participate in the second phase of our CA for Schools pilot, which offers programs at Year 3, Year 5 and Year 7 levels, as well as a series of open Workshops for secondary school students, where individuals from any school can opt in.

Intro to the CA Schools program to be rolled out in 2020

We are extremely excited about what 2020 will bring, and look forward to learning all we can about how we can use innovative approaches to problem solving, shared value and entrepreneurship to reinvigorate rural communities and make them more adaptive to change.

Could you be a Next Gen mentor?

In the coming 12 months we hope to announce the location of another Next Gen kids conference in a different rural area of Australia. I’d love to hear from any readers about communities that they feel would be well suited.

I’d also love to hear from people who feel that they might have something to offer as a potential mentor at such an event, no matter where you are based. Connect with me on LinkedIn and then email me at spowell@championsacademy.net.au and tell me what you can bring to the table!

I’m on a mission to be enabler of agents of change: by helping children and adults alike to develop their powers of observation of the changes that are going on around them; by developing their problem solving abilities; and showing them how their innovative ideas can become entrepreneurial actions that reinvest in rural regions.

In any way that I am capable, I want to help rural and regional communities to move out of the autopilot holding pattern of survival, and toward prosperity.

And I believe that by being generous with the time and energy we invest in our people, we are in fact shaping the future of our communities.

So that’s me.

I’d love to hear what has shaped you, and your community?

Are you getting through?

The busier and louder the human mind becomes in this ‘always on’ globally connected world, the shorter our attention span seems to get and more distracted we seem to become.

It is far too easy for things to get lost in translation when we are trying to communicate with others, whether in business or life, generally speaking.

When there is so much working against us as we attempt to get our message through, how do we know if we are being heard loud and clear? How do we know if the message we are sending is the one being received and that something’s not getting lost in translation?

Short answer: we don’t.

However, when I recently attended the Harvard Leadership Communication course with Marjorie North and Jill Abruzese Slye I learned a stack of things that I can do to increase the clarity of my message, the effectiveness of delivery, and give it the best possible chance of being heard as intended.

This was a professional development course which covered a lot of ground – I mean A LOT.

First there were speeches (impromptu, extemporaneous, and manuscript); the topical pattern of speech writing and Monroe’s Motivating Sequence. Then we dived head first into verbal and non-verbal communication delivery and feedback mechanisms, and learned how to effectively manage Q&A. Next we road tested the elements of persuasion (pathos, ethos and mythos), practiced the learned skills of listening (discriminative, comprehensive, appreciative, empathetic and critical/SIER model), and wore Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats to manage team communication. Finally, we weighed up the pros and cons of physical presentation tools and IT bits n bobs before presenting a personal story of our own to the group, which was also filmed (talk about sweaty palms)!

This group had 47 participants from 21 industries across five countries and included leaders from some of the most recognisable and successful companies we see in the news each week – I had to pinch myself a bit!

You can imagine then, that there were no shortage of great ideas shared, not just by the facilitators, but through the collective wealth of knowledge and experience in the room.

Here are a few of the “aha!” moments I had:

The reason your message is breaking down might not be just that they aren’t buying what you’re selling – it could be any number of the following things: wrong word choice; internal/external interference; no clear goal; your volume, tone, speed or accent; your body language; judgement, prejudice or cognitive bias; incorrect interpretation of an action (or reaction); attention span; cultural differences; lack of trust; difference of opinion; status, position or authority (or lack of); conflict; preconceived notion of outcome; listener burnout; adverse content; or plain simply how engaging you are.
Stories help the audience remember through association, they elicit emotion and pave the way for a call to action. Stories are also the most effective way for the human brain to make meaning of what it is hearing, because our brain is always searching for emotionally relevant information in order to convert it to memories (in the dark ages, this would have served the purpose of keeping us alive, as transition of critical knowledge was done by storytelling).
Listening is a learned skill that often goes against the values that we have developed in our formative years, so it is important to practice it consciously and exercise the skill just like you would any other technical skill to improve your ability. Being a great listener is a powerful tool.
When others are listening to you, there are five different reasons or ways that they are doing it: (1) discriminative listening, ie. reading between the lines; (2) comprehensive listening, to learn and be informed; (3) appreciative listening, ie. they are being entertained; (4) empathetic listening, to comfort and support you; or (5) critical listening such as the SIER model – exercising the Sense of hearing, Interpreting the message, Evaluating strengths/weaknesses, pros/cons, and reacting by assigning worth or value… Or maybe they are just smiling and nodding to be polite and they aren’t listening at all!

What I loved about this course was that its first and most important rule was that we needed to find our own baseline, our authentic sense of self in all forms of communication.

In the end, I think the biggest take away for me, was that an audience doesn’t separate what you say from who you are – so the person you portray when you are communicating should always be the person that you are – your most authentic self.

Don’t ‘should’ all over yourself!

This week I saw a brilliant keynote while at the SHEconnects conference, an event arranged by Venture Cafe at Cambridge Innovation Centre.

The speaker was Susan Duffy, Executive Director of the Babson College Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership (CWEL), a co-founder of the Women Innovating Now WINLab venture accelerator, and an inspired educator and advocate for gender equity as a driver of social and economic growth.

The premise of Susans presentation was deceptively simple:

Write yourself a new story;
Jump;
Befriend failure;
Houseclean your mind; and
Find your tribe.

Most of the big things that overwhelm us in careers or business (or indeed life) can be addressed by working through one or more of the above points.

-| rewrite your story |-

Grab a coffee, get comfy, this is going to take more than one attempt

Neuroscience tells us that humans are coded to think and behave according to the unwritten rules we have observed from the people closest to us in our formative years, ie. the value systems of the groups and environments we spend our time around, our own life experience, even genetic memory – these things make us develop powerful core beliefs about how the world works.

These core beliefs are deeply ingrained in us, because living by this ‘code’ and abiding by the social norms of the groups that we belong to (family, school, work and so on) are what shaped us as individuals. In fact, it is what has kept us alive.

This means it can be really hard work rewriting a personal narrative, there is a lot of history within us all that creates a subconscious resistance to change.

So, if all you are seeing is blockers and reasons why you can’t move forward when you picture where you want to be in the future, perhaps a first step toward recoding yourself and writing your new story is a statement that counter-challenges that thought process.

‘Why not me?!’

I’ll bet that felt good. Now, write it down. Write down that future self.

-| jump |-

So many people that I know and adore are paralysed by fear or self doubt when it comes to making a leap of faith. Sometimes the only way to do it is to just to bite your lip and launch yourself at the challenge in front of you.

Susan Duffy is a firm believer that when you jump, the net will appear. And if the leap has no visible landing, well, perhaps try a smaller step first. Invest only what you can afford to lose (in time, energy, dignity, money).

The important thing in this stage is to surround yourself with people who gently nudge you beyond your comfort zone (or perhaps give you the big shove you need) and make you feel a little uncomfortable. Otherwise, you stay too long in that safe zone where no learning or growing ever happens.

So jump. Do it sooner. And don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t land where you thought you should – the objective here is to learn from the experience.

-| befriend failure |-

If at first you don’t succeed, congratulations – you’re human.

Now all this jumping isn’t going to lead to instant success. And that’s not the point of it either. Jumping is about getting off your proverbial and moving forward.

When you jump, there are going to be times that you miss the target. So what? Susan made the point that we need to get more comfortable with failure.

Own it. Call it! “Well, I stuffed that up royally!”

You aren’t the first, and you most certainly won’t be the last. I guarantee you that all of the people you look up to have failed plenty! Ask them to share their lessons with you. Ask them to teach you how to find the lessons in your experience, if they aren’t clear to you. If your confidence has taken a hit, ask for their input on next steps.

Another valuable thing you can do is to surround yourself with other people who are going through trial and error, and support one another. Encourage the learning process with each set back. It’s important that we start humanising failure (instead of ostracising it) and recognise that it is a step closer to reaching where you want to be.

Susan suggested having an “I f’d that up!” night with friends. I thought that was a sterling idea and I am absolutely going to do it!

For all those data nerds out there – if you look at all the lessons you have gained from trial and error, you are now the only one who has that data. And unique data is invaluable.

-| houseclean your mind |-

Susan gave a great analogy to the inner battle that people have with their self worth, she said it’s like a television series playing in our head called ‘You Suck!’, where we are the central character, and each episode is another of our seemingly disastrous miscues, faux pas, shortcomings, wrong turns, mistakes, regrets, embarrassments or failures.

And then there’s the Imposter Monster that many of us have in our head that not only tells us we aren’t good enough, but also skews the verdict so that we don’t see the positive outcomes we have created.

When something goes wrong, we look inward and are quick to believe it was our fault. When something goes right, we often attribute that success to a third party or some other circumstance that points outward.
Susan Duffy

But when we are really sweating on something that we think has gone horribly wrong, sometimes that Imposter Monster tells us horrible things like “you’re going to get fired”, or “you have lost all credibility” (or about ten thousand other things that make us feel absolutely horrible inside).

Yes, most of us realise that this kind of extreme self talk is our own worst enemy, but when we are triggered, what can we do to jolt ourselves out of it and move forward?

Susan suggests that’s when you need to have a clean out. Stop and ask yourself these three simple questions:

What do I know for a fact about this that is true?
What do I know for a fact about this that is untrue?
What about this is a case of ‘I don’t know’?

When you start seeing the things that are making you anxious through a factual lens, you will realise that very few tidbits are actually true.

Don’t make assumptions – to quote Susan “are you suddenly a mind reader? Do you have a crystal ball?” erm, no.

For the bad stuff that has happened that you know to be true, ok. Mistakes happen. But now we know how to befriend failure: own it. And how do you do that?

Feel it. Fix it. Forget it.
Susan Duffy

Feeling it? Great. Remember that feeling, and use it as inspiration never to repeat that mistake.

Next, accept that this has happened, and do what is within your control to fix it.

Once you’ve done that, it’s important to ask yourself “what did I learn from this?” Remember the lesson, but let go of the emotional baggage, it serves you no purpose.

All that is left to do now, is shake it off and move on.

-| find your tribe |-

The tribe at Venture Cafe Cambridge during the SHEconnects conference

Humans are hardwired to be social, and in the dark ages our very survival depended on our ability to form part of a tribe. The tribe protected us from predators and enemies, supported us emotionally as a family, nourished us physically and gave us shelter.

In this day and age, many of us like to go it alone, and that is fine – but our ability to thrive will be heightened by those who can teach us, support us, encourage us and be our champion. That’s what a modern tribe does.

Susan pointed out that when we let people into our world (forming our tribe) it promotes self efficacy, provides mastery experience and offers vicarious learning through role models. Our tribe helps us to keep our anxiety low, and make meaning of the life lessons we encounter.

There are very few things that you will do in your life that aren’t improved by letting others in. So actively seek out those who are healthy, empowering tribe members to surround yourself with, and they will walk beside you as you strive to live that new story you have written.

So now it is time to cast off the manacles of all that “should have … would have … could have” baggage that you have been carrying around. It’s getting you nowhere.

As we were reminded in my favourite moment of the keynote, letting go of your old story is meant to be hard, it’s meant to be uncomfortable “… but you’ve got to stop should-ing all over yourself” and get on with the business of being the best version of yourself that you can be.

Susan Duffy, extraordinary human and fierce advocate for female entrepreneurs
(image courtesy https://venturecafecambridge.org/sheconnects/)

The writing was on the wall, I mean, literally.

Last night around midnight, I found myself Googling.

I was looking up things to see and do in Seaport (Boston MA), as I planned to go exploring the following morning, and had been given a hot tip by a dear friend back home that this was a place of innovation in action, must-see public art installments and entrepreneurial pop-ups.

As I clicked and scrolled through the bounty of options for ways to spend my day, one jumped off the page at me and screamed “Sarah! These are your people!”

It was the Venture Cafe at District Hall where they were hosting their monthly “meetup and coffee” shindig for entrepreneurs to meet and, well, drink coffee.

So I took myself along, not quite knowing what to expect… boy am I glad I did! I arrived before 9am and didn’t tear myself away until around 4pm (and even then it was only to beat the traffic).

I met people, I coffeed, I had a quick meeting, then set myself up in the comfort and convenience of the awesome free workspaces, and proceeded to knock out about a weeks worth of work in the space of a few short hours.

The atmosphere in District Hall was electric, quite literally (you’d think the constantly changing rainbow coloured flourescent lighting would be distracting, but strangely, no)!

I made more impromptu connections and even got the opportunity to have a brilliant sit down with one of the Directors of the Venture Cafe, to hear how it was started, how it was resourced and how it grew to become this exciting, living, breathing machine of possibility.

Seriously, what I (and no doubt thousands like me) would give to have a place like this within cooee of home.

District Hall was not at all hall like. And in terms of shared workspaces, it was so much more than just a modern building with practical furniture, free wifi, oodles of powerpoints and writeable walls. It is an enabler for lean start ups; it is an enclave for business and community events; an interactive learning environment; a living knowledge base; an incubator/investor hang out; a stage on which big dreams could become ideas, then plans, then actions … and who knows where they might go next?

I’ll tell you, in about 12 months.

I will now seek Venture Cafes out in every location I travel to. In fact, I’m visiting another one tomorrow in Cambridge, but that’s another blog post.

Image courtesy of https://districthallboston.org

Ideas worth spreading

I’m a bit of a fan of the TED Talk, I can get lost down a rabbit hole watching talk after talk about some completely outside of the box idea or concept. And today, I got to see it in real life!

I attended TEDx NortheasternU with another of the wonderful people that I have had the opportunity to meet this week, fellow Aussie Zali Yager, an Associate Professor at Victoria University. Zali is incredibly knowledgable and passionate about health and wellbeing, and we’ve shared some great conversations around mental health of mums, mentoring young women, and social cohesion in communities.

Today we heard 11 speakers on a range of topics that were all tied to the theme of ‘Branches | Cultivating Connections’:

Mary Steffel spoke about decision paralysis and what we gain by giving choices away by delegation or outsourcing;
Alicia Payne shared her motivation for getting involved in the organisation ‘Strong Women, Strong Girls‘ and many stories which demonstrated the importance of empowering young women to be strong, loud and proud;
Victoria D’Agostino had some great ideas around the decentralisation of health care, and making it possible to test for diseases such as cervical cancer in the same way a home pregnancy kit works;
Heidi Kevie-Feldman spoke about what 911 dispatchers can teach us about our linguistic choices, and redesigning questions to redirect attention;
Minhal Ahmed was very passionate about how the gut microbes talk to our brain using the nervous system (not our bloodstream), and how this makes our gut a tangible, and not just intuitive sixth sense;
Victor Velazquez talked about art and entrepreneurship being the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled;
Amirah Aly spoke on the topic of neuro-degenenerative disease and emerging treatments that cross the blood-brain barrier;
Bobette Buster had fascinating insights to the ‘Front Porch Society’ and living memory, and shared her beliefs on the creation of muscle memory for the act of listening;
Claire Coletti is concerned by the fact that by the year 2050, seven out of ten people will be living in cities, and the housing crisis is not only one of economy and politics, but also a cultural crisis of community that she believes a life built together in carefully designed community living spaces can help to address;
Nalani Genser taught us how to make Mondays more meaningful by defining our own non-negotiable for our work and life; and
Salar Shahini talked about the impact of potholes (yes really), among much more!

There was so much to take in. If there was one thing that I had to choose to pass on to someone else from what I learned today, it would be Alicia Payne’s wisdom. As a Mentor she lives by (and teaches) a value system that says

you can have any opinion you want in this world, as long as you have
(1) The facts to back it up;
(2) the Gall to stand by your statements; and
(3) the Patience to listen to the other side.

As I said above, Alicia helps young women and girls to be Strong, Loud and Proud, she defined strength as excelling as far as you can go – I loved that. Something else that she said that really resonated with me, is that we need to teach young women important phrases from the earliest possible age – phrases such as “I haven’t finished speaking yet, please don’t interrupt me”.

I’m sure you can imagine many more statements that you can teach to your daughters, grand-daughters, nieces, sisters, cousins and any young women you are a role model to.

One I’m going to be sure to teach to my daughter Scout, is “yes, I can”. But do you know what? I’m also going to teach it to my son. Because we all need to believe that we are capable of growing and achieving, no matter what scale it is on.

Nice landing, wrong airport.

I am a firm believer that innovative ideas and concepts that lead to prosperity do so because they are solving someone-else’s problem or meeting someone else’s need, it’s not rocket science. And I’m certainly not unique in that belief. It is something that many business owners, conceptual thinkers, authors, coaches and mentors will tell you.

If you can identify an unstated problem or pain-point, or an unmet need, and develop some kind of solution that addresses it, it will probably be quite successful (in a nutshell).

It was no great shock then, when the Harvard Design Thinking course I did this week with Jon Campbell and Dave Power began by delving into this very subject!

We were introduced to complimentary thinking between business and design schools of thought. A simple overview would be to say that where traditional business thoughts and processes are logical, based on precedents and are results-driven; Design Thinking is intuitive, asks “what if?”, is unconstrained by the past (or status quo), and the reason I think it most appeals to me – it relishes ambiguity and strives to make meaning.

Design Thinking teaches that we not only need to approach business in the context of problem solving, we need to ensure that we put humans (customers or stakeholders) at the centre of the design process and at all times, have their needs at the fore.

This is a process that requires us to employ empathy (and that doesn’t just mean putting ourselves in the stakeholder’s shoes and asking ourselves how we would feel in their situation). It means digging deeper into their psyche – often it might mean literally walking alongside them as they confront the issue and experience it firsthand.

Only when we do this, do we really ‘get under the problem’. We begin to use more rational thinking that puts the problem into context.

But human centred Design Thinking, doesn’t begin and end there.

It is a ‘central iterative process’, a learning continuum that encourages a cycle of fast development, putting a prototype to the stakeholder, getting feedback, refining, and repeating; iterating often.

Human centred design is not about developing a product or service that is perfect or right the first time, because the risk is that we could invest an incredible amount of time, money and trust to build something that is theoretically, aesthetically or functionally perfect, only to discover that it doesn’t actually solve the human problem. In this situation, you end up with a concept that has great novelty, but no usefulness.

As they say in the industry, “nice landing, wrong airport”.

Looking at Design Thinking as a model for innovation, there are many different approaches that are worth taking a look at:-

Stanford D School (where it all began): Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test
Continuum: Alignment, Learning, Analysis, Ideation & Envisioning, Design & Prototype
Luma Institute: Looking, Understanding, Making
Darden School: What is, what if, what wows, what works

The underlying principle is the same = Learn. Design. Test. Model.

The two biggest areas that most organisations fall down, is in the learning and testing phases.

One of the reasons for this is that we have a tendency to impose our own views and beliefs on a problem, rather than seeking out new information which may contradict those beliefs. But that is part of building a robust concept – the more we find out about the problem and the more we test it from the perspective of the stakeholder, the closer we get to solving the problem and meeting the need.

What is important to recognise, is that ‘the right ideas’ for solving stakeholder problems exist only in the place where our stakeholders conscious functional needs and their subconscious emotional desires intersect. And you can’t presume to know those things unless you involve those people in the process.

During this course we also explored the notion of back-casting (as opposed to forecasting), which is mapping a future state and then plotting the steps required to get there, and talked about the S curve of company profitability and the point at which innovation needs to reach market, in order for the next S curve to hit its straps before the last one levels out.

If I can say it in one sentence, innovation needs to be continuous.

Again, one of the greatest benefits of doing this course was the value of meeting and connecting with so many highly intelligent and inspirational people.

One of the great takeaways for me from the Design Thinking course, was that we have the ability to manufacture serendipity – to a degree – by creating the right conditions for innovation to take place. How cool is that?

By bringing different disciplines, demographics and cultures together into a team, and putting them in a space that is away from their usual work environment, we create the perfect storm (brainstorm, that is). It’s like a flash mob of ideas. Combinations of people who aren’t in positions of power, or who don’t seem to be a natural fit with the stakeholder, will more than likely contribute content or ask questions that had never been considered and result in more extreme outside of the box thinking.

Another great nudge for me, was the importance of emotional engagement and envisioning to prototyping. By that I mean focussing on the human element and the actual stakeholder application. Telling the story of the human need during innovation prevents people from focussing on the reasons that a concept/product/service won’t work, and helps them to focus on the problem to be solved.

And a good reminder for all of us who are searching for solutions to problems (whether for ourselves or others, in business or in life), think about phrasing the problem as a question. Importantly, begin that question with “how can we….?” to help you to remove the impossibility blinkers and start ideating the solution.

How to get fired

I have to say, I never thought I’d see the day when aiming to get yourself (or someone else) fired would be on my To Do List, but you know – I have learned in the last two days, sometimes that’s just what it takes to get your ideas from mild to WILD.

The “get fired” strategy and roughly 42 other items are on a list of gems I will take away and implement after the last two days of Creative Thinking: Innovative Solutions to Complex Challenges with Susan Robertson and Anne Manning.

It was a fantastic course, there were 31 of us representing 9 countries and 22 industries.

They say there is strength in diversity and this course certainly was a great melting pot of the minds. There were military personnel, CEO’s, creative directors, educators, famous authors, quiet achievers, global giants, start-ups – and possibly even up-starts (or as we say in this day and age, disruptors)!

The facilitators were fantastic and imparted so much knowledge in such a short timeframe, but everyone bought something to the table and openly shared their own business practices, it added incredible value to the experience.

A good handful of us are also doing the Design Thinking course beginning tomorrow, it will be awesome to continue the working relationships that have formed.

By this point you are possibly drumming your fingers on the table impatiently and saying “but Sarah, c’mon – what’s with this getting fired malarky?”. Allow me to elaborate.

Many of the strategies that I have learned over the last two days were techniques to enhance brainstorming quality and quantity for clarification and ideation. A great way to get people to really push past their cognitive biases and leave their comfort zone (a space that requires some pretty hard thinking), is to give them license.

If you say to someone “come up with 5 ideas about _______ that would get you fired” it tells them that they can suggest supposedly ridiculous ideas without fear of consequences, and encourages them to really think outside of the square. They reach into the unknown, probably into a world of crazy.

They will no doubt come up with a bunch of ideas that are completely impractical or unachievable in their entirety, but that crazy will likely also contain glimmers of brilliance, idea shards that can be fleshed out to produce the kind of ideas that innovative products, services and solutions are made of.

But it’s just one way of getting people to push past the discomfort of stretching their thinking muscles (let’s just pretend thinking muscles exist).

Other ways to encourage people to make uninhibited contributions in group brainstorming situations included:

Using ideation statement starters such as – “I wish…”, “wouldn’t it be great if…”, “we might” or “what if…”;
Stick ‘Em Up – shouting out something you’ve written on a Post-It note in front of a group before sticking it on the board, it is a form of a stimulus and also creates a healthy sense of competition;
Assumption Busters – writing down all the assumptions about a concept (you know they are assumptions when they start with statements like “this always….” or “we never….” or “everyone knows…”), then choosing one assumption and pretending it doesn’t exist, and reimagining the possibilities;
The rule of 3 – using three rounds of brainstorming to push past system 1 thinking to system 2 brain use, methods such as silent Brainwriting were great ways to do this.

Then there were exercises like Fast-Talking in a pivoting stream of consciousness, the “change 5 more things” challenge, every project has a marshmallow, “have we had enough?” shuffling, “yes and…” party planning, a Jaws Scenario Board and much, much more.

The big take aways from the course for me were a better understanding of the necessity and timing of both divergent and convergent thinking; the fact that framing is a collective cognitive bias that limits our thinking, but that some limits are useful and framing (or reframing) are actually tools we can use as a strategy for stimulating creative thinking; the GPS problem solving method; and discovering which Foresight types were my best collaborating partners.

It’s been a pretty intense, but thoroughly motivating couple of days and I can’t wait to begin integrating what I’ve learned with the Champions Academy team!

The Eagle Has Landed

Last night I arrived in Boston MA ready for my Study Tour to Harvard.

For the past 24 hours, my mind has been swinging wildly like a metronome between “what the hell am I doing here, I’m not smart enough to go to Harvard!” and “eeeeeeee! Hurry up and get here, I can’t wait!”

Today I walked from my eclectic little loft apartment in Cambridge down to Harvard Square, where did a recon mission to find out where my course was going to be held (to save me getting lost tomorrow morning) and bought supplies for the week ahead.

I’m more than a little bit nervous. The welcome email said to wear flat shoes.

The only flat shoes I own are thongs (note to self, don’t tell people I wear thongs over here, it means something else), and ugg boots, which are perfect for the 3 degree celsius weather, but not so much for the snow.

I am yet to find a coffee place. You know what I mean, a coffee place that is friendly, serves good espresso, maybe a little food, and fuels you up for the day? It’s the kind of place you could happily open your laptop and work for a full day.

A wave of nostalgia washes over me as I think of theme song to the TV show Cheers and sing to myself ‘sometimes you want to go where your barista knows your name, and they’re always glad you came…’

*cue record scratch sound effect*

Today’s search for a coffee place did not end quite like that. I stopped in at Starbucks on my walk and ordered what I thought was a cappuccino: “I’ll have a medium cap, wet foam please” (Starbucks slang for ‘more coffee in the cup than froth’).

They served me a large cup of filtered black coffee.

Clearly, my accent is going to be a bigger problem than I expected.

I have scoped out a new coffee joint to try tomorrow. It is next door to The Rock n Roll Daycare Centre, where they encourage music and teach songwriting to kids. I think Tex and Scout would like that place.

Innovative Solutions to Complex Challenges with Anne Manning and Susan Robertson kicks off tomorrow morning, and I am raring to go.

Come at me, Harvard.

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