It Is Always Possible To…What?

I have started a business for people who want to make a difference.
I have called it always possible. But what the hell does that mean? What does it do?

When offering a service rather than a tangible ‘thing’ - an item for sale - the first challenge for any start-up is to define what lies at the core. What makes you interesting? What is your ‘why?’.

As Simon Sinek says, ‘people don’t buy what you do, but why you do it’.

With everyday that I work on the idea of always possible, it becomes clearer. Here is my pitch to you:

Why?

It is always possible to be brilliant. 

If you run an organisation that seeks to make the world better, or to challenge the things that don’t work - then I believe you can do it brilliantly.

I believe that if you’ve got the heart, soul and brain, you can make it work.

Whether you run a school, a government department, a tiny social enterprise, a youth club, a dance company, a research charity, a coffee morning, a synagogue or an after-school karate class - your provision has the possibility of changing the world, one positive experience at a time.

I believe that you need three things to be brilliant.

- The right people

- A clear purpose

- The right resources

It’s obvious? Think about an organisation you love working with or buying from, one that is thriving - what is it you love about it?

The organisations that don’t thrive, that either never get off the ground, or grow rapidly too big, or get so distracted that the floor collapses, will be missing one the three ingredients. I promise you.

No organisation is quite the same as an other, because each one has different people, a slightly different purpose, and different resources - but that is one of the most exciting things there is. But no organization is the first to try, fail and try again.

One of the hardest things to do, and believe me I know, is to step back and ask yourself the following questions:

- Does everyone in this organisation share the same values?

- Can someone we have never met explain why we exist?

- If 50% of our income streams vanished tomorrow, could we still thrive?

If you answer these questions honestly and you get three yesses, you can achieve everything you have set out to achieve. And much more.

If there is a no or two, then you’re with the majority. The thing is, though, you have just realised that something probably needs to change - which makes true brilliance only a short distance away.

What?

This is a long-winded sales pitch, you’re thinking - if you’ve got this far. Maybe. But the ‘why’ is fundamental, and I believe it is always possible to be brilliant. I wanted to set that context.

We all need a bit of help to be brilliant, and we are only brilliant because of our behaviours and the connections we build.

I’ve been around the block, for about 15 years so far. I’ve worked for/with some truly brilliant organisations, and I have worked with ones that have collapsed. I have supported charities, local authorities, training providers, schools, theatre companies, artists, social enterprises and more - I have made mistakes and prevented mistakes.

But my learning has led me to a point where I can use my knowledge and intuition quickly to create an environment for change.

I have met some amazing people on the way, and they are joining me for this journey, as associates, advisers and partners. If you book me, you might get them too, and they are worth their weight in gold.

We can help you, as friendly human beings who will *get* your business. We know you’re not like everyone else.

- The right people

We can help you develop your staff teams - whether it is helping clarify your vision and values or more formal training and CPD. 

We can support your leaders, with coaching or strategy planning - and we can help you hire the right people, or restructure existing teams for increased productivity and internal wellbeing.

We can help you to evaluate and self-assess your impact, and the impact of your team members. You need a culture that drives forward, gets things done - with a team that looks after each other and plays its best hand everyday. Sometimes a pair of outside eyes helps get to the heart of any barriers much quicker.

- A clear purpose

We can help you re-discover your ‘why’ - internally and externally. We can work with you around leadership thinking, and the creativity of being different to everyone else. We’re big, bold, creative people - but we have a keen eye for detail and for an opportunity.

We can link you up with local business networks, strategic influencers and bigger picture connections. With our help, you can distill your message so that everyone knows why you do what you do. We can improve your digital presence, the consistency of your communication and your presentation skills.

We have been designing successful education and creative projects across the south east and London since 1999. We can use what we know to ensure your good idea works in practice.

- The right resources

Our associates have raised and managed over £10million of public grants and contracts, philanthropic giving and commercial sales over the last decade.

We can help you write that winning bid, put together that killer pitch and make the most of your assets. Do you know what funding is available to you? We probably do.

We know how to hire the right staff, and to keep them. We can audit your health & safety practices and ensure that your policies are fit-for-purpose and keep your staff and service users safe.

* * * * * * 

If you like our approach, and you think that a bit of targeted support could help take your organisation to the next level - we’d love to hear from you. It all starts with a free no-fuss, no-obligation consultation to see if we can add value to your company.

Thank you for reading. Please share and ask questions. Have a lovely week.

Rich Freeman

web: www.alwayspossible.co.uk

email: ideas@alwayspossible.co.uk

tweet: @always_possible

call: 07877 307883

Curating The Noise

I've been thinking a lot this week about curation, and the art of filtering/editing in a world full of noise. 

If you're anything like me, then you'll struggle to be satisfied that you're ever reading or doing or involving yourself in enough, conscious that you're missing out on something somewhere, not part of an essential conversation happening around the corner. For people like me, social media is both the best and worst possible thing to get hooked onto.

We now lead personal and professional lives anchored in an overwhelming everness of information - there is no stimulus that isn't available immediately in some form, but we are left to rely on piecemeal or amateur curation (or worse still, we have to rely on ourselves as editors). Who, on earth, can we rely on to vet the noise, to steer us to the genuinely good stuff and to stop us wasting time?

Yesterday morning I had a long catch-up with always possible associate, Chris Middleton, an entrepreneurial journalist and magazine editor with whom I have worked for a few years. He insists that print media is far from dying, and - like vinyl records - is enjoying a role as a product that fights the endless noise; beautiful magazines are being produced about incredibly niche areas of thought, standing up as something carefully curated, assembled and informed. 

For me, the element of trust is vital and the most successful platforms on and offline are those that you know will filter the content that is useful to you. There is a great, rebellious power in being a good curator in a time when the accepted norm for media consumption is that we want everything, everywhere, from everyone, all the time. But who decides who should curate, filter and edit - if we follow a particular blog, hashtag, LinkedIn group or individual how do we know that they are not missing out on some of the vital conversations too? Does it matter? How informed do we need to be to still lead and create in our respective fields?

It might be a cliche to cling onto, but it's hard to deny that the last 5 years has overthrown traditional ideas of communication spaces and has democratised the voice of the individual - anyone can be a creator and commentator of content, and magnificent online collaborations can lead to more innovative inquiry amongst communities of people who want to make a difference. In the noise there are definitely wonderful ideas, but how do we ensure they get to supersede the awful ones? For those working in education, the possibilities are limitless, and the advent of online learning will become the single biggest tool for affecting global change - but limitless is a very daunting place to start. I want to say to my 6 year old, here is the whole universe, for you, and there is nothing you can't do within it - but by doing that, I've disabled her before she's even started. Everyone needs a curator to help guide them through it.

After my meeting pondering this, I was privileged enough to spend the sunny afternoon hanging out at Charleston, the East Sussex farmstead once inhabited by the Bloomsbury group. I shall hopefully be working as a consultant with the trust that now diligently owns and runs the site, so after my meeting with directors I snuck onto a guided tour of the house as - despite spending 4 years of dissertation writing on British modernism, Woolf and 1920s art, I had never been before. 

The place is astonishing, deceptively big although the individual rooms are small - almost every surface, wall, furniture piece, fireplace painted or stencilled with striking patterns and once bold colours. A whole building curated by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant for themselves and their friends and unorthodox families; a different kind of libertarian noise to that of the Internet age, perhaps antithetical to it as it was really by invite only. There is a mixture of the slapdash (paintstrokes on plaster on the wrong type of paint etc) and of the utterly precise, with contributions to the interior design evolving from 1916 through to the late 70s. The challenge for the trust is to capture the history, spirit and energy of style - a bit like a living, well-designed art magazine - whilst protecting a fragile infrastructure and making it accessible and relevant within a digital universe. 

There is a question for all of us about what role we want in the noise. And as I build my consultancy business, my own curation of advice and guidance for clients will naturally become increasingly acute, as a trusted adviser of mainstream policy and thinking, but also sniffing out the more curious and less visible conversations that may be ultimately more exciting. A goal for the next year is to come to terms with the noise, own it, distill it, filter it, make it palatable for others without over diluting it. Wish me luck.

What Am I Doing?

Hello. I'm Richard.

In November 2014, I registered self-employed and created the trading name 'always possible' as the genesis of an idea. I was still working full-time as the Operations Manager for a busy training provider in Brighton as well as juggling life as a father (a 5 year old and an 8 month old), a husband, a school governor and a human being who likes to eat, cycle, garden and sit down with my eyes closed and listen to sad music.

The urge to create was taking me over, and whilst my work was exciting, ever varied and valued - I was feeling stuck in a bubble and bogged in detail. I'm good at building networks and sniffing out opportunities, at advising and shaping new ideas, so every inch of my instinct was telling me to engineer that in a new way.

The name 'always possible' is intended to answer development questions - What about? Can I? Is there a way to?

It's always possible.

It's always possible to be brilliant and imaginative and successful. It's always possible to get things right and to make a difference. 

You just need to work out what's getting in the way and remove it. Always simple? Hell no. But I am confident I can help others - I have spent the past 15 years solving creative, business, planning, staffing and delivery problems.

I'm not an expert, or a guru, on anything. These lazy titles suggest that all the learning has happened and that curiosity is spent.

I am a specialist in a few areas, but a student of everything. I have experience , an analytical brain and an approach with people that works. The adventure and the challenge now is to see if these qualities can continue to help make lots of other organisations get better and thrive in a difficult market place. 

I'm keen to do this differently, and not on my own. I have already gathered some amazing associate consultants to join the biz, and there will be lots more on that later.

Why start this blog now?

My business cards arrived today, which seems to be symbolic - an old 'technology', but a new direction of travel for me.

I will blog regularly, documenting my journey, opportunities and challenges and the interesting people I meet and things I learn along the way. I'll not be betraying my clients' confidence, just mapping the discoveries of a new business finding its feet. Hopefully it will inform and entertain you.

Let me know what you think:

blog@alwayspossible.co.uk

Rich