A number of things coalesced for me this evening – so I can’t help myself- I should have been in bed twenty minutes ago. I got home a few hours ago, after a great presentation to about 250 parents at a school – my mind was buzzing, and as part of the relaxation technique I decided to have a long soaking bath and read a good book. Couldn’t choose which book to read, so picked up Tom Peters’s Re-Imagine! (but it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) . I have been avoiding this book for awhile – it just looked a bit ADD to me (but that’s how I look to others, so no disrespect meant). (PS – also check out Tom’s blog site: http://www.tompeters.com (hey, Tom, get trackbacks!).
Amy's first projectI’m not sure what the rest of the book is like, but the first 50 pages were excellent. By then my bath was lukewarm. As I got out, I noticed a large A3 poster on my bed – it turns out it’s my six-year-old daughter Amy’s first school project. Amy is in Grade 0 – a singularly badly named school year, though not as bad as her sister Hannah who is in Grade 000 (triple nought) – so this is a milestone for her, and one she obviously wants me to be involved in.
In his book, Tom Peters calls for a new vision. He imagines:

  • A new brand of employee
  • a new social contract – societies that educate their young to break the rules and invent vivid new futures – that encourage labour mobility through policies that support of the entrepreneurial instinct…
  • How can I help my daughter to become one of these beings? One of the ways is to heighten the entrepreneurial instinct – may be getting her to ask the question, “how can I make money out of this?” But even as I had better thought, I realised that that type of thinking is part of the old contract. To help my daughter be part of the new one, I need to get her to ask an entirely different type of question. A question I can embed in her consciousness – a question she will ask of everything she ever does. WOW!
    What will the question be?
    Right now, a few moments before switching off and going to bed (and possibly a few moments after my brain has switched off), I am leaning towards, “how is this adding value to other people?” So, we went to Cape Town, we took photos, we stuck them on cardboard, we’re showing you – but what value have we added? How have we improved other people’s lives? How is this adding value to the people?
    I think I like that…

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