Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Chaos, Confidence, Creativity, Culture, Daddyhood, Education, Emotion, Empathy, Equality, Innocence, Jill, Love, Management, Mum & Dad, Otis, Parents
So Otis goes to this amazing hippy kindergarten school near where we live.
It’s a co-parenting school which means that the parents have to help with the schooling of the kids, not just with the funding.
It follows a very specific philosophy defined by the founder and it’s a place where kids learn through expressing their creativity.
They even have a ‘mud room’ for the kids to cause mayhem when it rains.
Put simply, we love it.
A few weeks ago, we went there on the weekend to help decorate it during spring break when I came across these 2 signs in the school …
I love them.
It sums up everything we adore about the school.
It captures exactly why Otis feels it’s a safe and happy place for him to explore.
It also addresses something I have been looking into for a while, which is the lack of outlet American men have to express their feelings.
Everything is built on acting tough.
Crying is for wimps.
Hell, even the bars are full of sports TV’s basting out scores, which means people don’t have the quiet to talk to one another – something I had growing up in England that actually encouraged the sharing of feelings and emotions. Albeit often wrapped up in banter.
The macho pride that seems to underpin so much of American male society feels like it’s still the 1950’s … which is why I love that this school doesn’t tell kids to ‘stop crying’, but asks what is wrong and then sympathises with their predicament which remarkably, helps them stop crying far more quickly and in a more positive way than any shouting would ever do.
Now imagine if companies operated by the same ideals.
Listening.
Valuing.
Caring.
Developing.
Oh I know those words appear in a million mission statements, but we all know they’re often used more as an illusion than an action.
In the bid to build office ‘culture’, so many organizations forget it’s not just about what you say – or even what you do – it’s the practiced beliefs that defines what everyone values, which is why companies could learn even more from this school than my dear Otis.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Disney, Family, Fatherhood, Jill, My Fatherhood, Otis
Following on from yesterday’s post, I’ve taken today off so I can take Otis for his first visit to Disneyland.
I can tell you right now he is going to absolutely bloody love it … and I have to tell you I’m glad he will because it has cost the equivalent of the GDP of a medium sized European nation and I’d be devastated to have to sell a kidney for something he won’t enjoy.
As much as I can be rather skeptical about Disney, I have to say they know how to capture kids imagination.
I still remember taking Otis to a hospital in Shanghai and – as soon as he clapped eyes on the TV showing Frozen – his pain and tears disappeared to be replaced with a hypnotic state.
So that’s where I’ll be today and then I’ll spend the weekend trying to recover from it as well as hope my beloved Nottingham Forest end the season on a high, which – given the position they were in last season – already feels like they’re playing in football Disneyland.
Now I know finishing mid-table in the Championship may not seem the sort of thing anyone should celebrate, but when you’ve had the turmoil we’ve had over the last 20 years – and especially the last 5 – it’s feels really good to have a team that is occasionally in the news for the way they’re playing football rather the way the terrible ex-CEO was playing with the club and it’s finances.
So in a way to honor Nottingham Forest being slightly less shit than they were last year [when they were super shit] I hereby reproduce my ‘everything for a £1’ shop version of one of my favourite Nike/Wieden ads ever.
Horrific isn’t it?
Especially compared to the original.
Putting aside the fact I’m wearing something ‘Adidas’, it’s a bit like comparing a pair of Hi-Tec trainers to a pair of NIKE’s, but then that’s like comparing the current Forest side to the team that dominated Europe in the early 80’s.
Or – said another way – how it feels to be a Forest fan for the last couple of decades.
So now I’ve ruined your weekend, I’m off … see you Monday.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Chaos, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Experience, Immaturity, Insight, Jill, Management, Marketing, Otis, Parents, Wieden+Kennedy
I’m old.
In fact by adland rules, I’m a bloody dinosaur.
That’s not because I’m switched off to contemporary culture – quite the opposite – but because the industry is ageist to the core.
The reality is anyone at my age tends to face an interesting dilemma in terms of how they are perceived …
Be old but think young and the industry sees you as a try-hard.
Be old and act old and the industry sees you as past-it.
Both things are wrong of course and it’s one of the reasons I always loved Wieden because they valued creativity rather than devaluing age. Of course, you have to keep the flow of new, exciting, dangerous talent coming into the place … but in my experience, when people have an open mind, the young learn from the old and vice versa and the end result is something even more potent than it would have otherwise been.
But maybe that’s just me trying to post rationalise my value.
The thing is, as I get older, I don’t want to subscribe to the ‘life’ I am supposed to have.
That doesn’t mean I aspire to living a long-term midlife crisis any more than I want to spend my time gardening, drinking wine or playing golf … if people want to do that, that’s fine, but I want to indulge in the things that continue to fascinate, intrigue and challenge me.
I wrote about this once before, but the best and worst thing about growing older is that you are continually discovering things you want to explore – in fact, the more you explore, the more you discover additional things you want to explore – but underpinning all this is the unshakable knowledge the time you have to do it is more limited than ever and so there will be paths that will be unexplored.
That’s quite the mindfuck.
Years ago a man I met said, “you know you’re getting old when you can’t feasibly double your age”.
At the time I remember laughing but now I’m in that situation, it’s confronting.
I have so much I want to do. See. Try. Explore.
Then there’s the things like seeing my son forge his own path.
While spending more time with my beloved wife.
More memories. Less dreams.
The idea that time is getting shorter can really fuck you up.
And that’s why for me, it’s about trying to ensure my family life a life of fulfillment.
I don’t want to subscribe to irrelevance.
Sure, one day I might be regarded as that for companies, but this is not about them – but me.
My Mum always had a desire live at the speed of contemporary culture.
She didn’t want to feel she was left behind.
That didn’t mean she did things she didn’t want to do, but she also didn’t want to live in a bubble where her context for life was far removed from the realities of life so she was open to the new and actively explored it … not in the bullshit way advertising portrays it, but in her interest in culture, from comedians and artists to music and politics.
That’s an amazing lesson to be taught – one I wholly subscribe to – which is why I think the industry is missing the point when it labels people over 40 as over-the hill. For me, rather than judge individuals by their physical; age, they should judge them by what they bring … what they challenge … what they change … because it’s the one’s who refuse to be labelled who can make exciting things happen.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Confidence, Culture, Dad, Daddyhood, Education, England, Family, Happiness, Innocence, Insight, Jill, Love, Mum, Mum & Dad, Otis, Parents, Relevance, Resonance, Standards, Unexpected Relevance
As I’ve written before, I didn’t go to University. I knew pretty early on that I didn’t want to continue my formal education.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t/don’t like to learn, it just means I find it far more powerful when it’s not in an academic environment.
I still remember telling my parents my decision and being slightly scared.
They desperately wanted me to go so I was worried they would see this as a slight on them – which is absolutely not what it was meant to be.
They asked for my reasons and when I told them, they said that they would support my decision as long as I applied in case I changed my mind.
So I did.
And I got accepted.
But I was still sure not going was the right thing for me, so my parents – while obviously disappointed – supported my decision and never brought it up again.
Looking back now, I feel that must have been very hard for them.
At that point, going to university was the fast track to a career and yet – as another act of their love and confidence in me – they pushed me to follow the things that genuinely interested and excited me and hoped it would all work out.
I’d say it did.
But now I’m a dad and while Otis is only 3, the thought of education looms large.
Would I do the same thing as him?
Of course I want to help equip my son in the best way possible for the life he wants to lead and one of those ways is to provide him with a good education. But the fact is I’m vehemently opposed to private education and while general access schools can be very good, the reality is private tends to offer better opportunities simply because of the funding and the facilities … which leads to an interesting conflict.
What’s best for my son versus what’s true to me?
Given Otis is so young right now, the decision will ultimately be mine and his Mum’s, but once he’s older, what do I do if he chooses a path I feel is not in his best interests.
Sure, it worked out for me, but the World was different back then and then I saw the ‘god’ instagram above – a sentiment that was absolutely reinforced by our recent America In The Raw research – and realised that by the time he has to make some choices, he will be far more aware of what he needs to do to increase his odds of success than his Mum or me.
But then I realised something else …
It’s not just about acknowledging their view of their World will be better than yours, it’s also backing your parenting.
When my Mum and Dad supported my decision, they were ultimately supporting how they raised me.
They believed the values and smarts they’d instilled in me were the right ones to enable me to make the right choices … and while I know they would have been there if it all fell down, that sense of confidence and belief probably enabled me to go to places I might otherwise not have done. Places I might not otherwise have felt I deserved to be.
And that’s why backing your team is everything.
Of course you have to instill values and standards into them, but once that’s done, you have to back them including what they think is right – even if you don’t – because if that doesn’t happen, you’re literally stopping their potential rather than liberating it.
Thank you Mum and Dad. Again.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Dad, Daddyhood, Jill, Mum, Mum & Dad, My Fatherhood, Otis
It’s the last day of the first week of blog posts for the new year.Congratulations, you’ve survived.
So I thought I’d end the week on a positive.
No, a real one.
You see there was recently read a Linkedin article asking people what piece of advice they would give to their children.
Obviously this is a big, big question because ultimately, there’s so many things you could say and want to say.
But then I realized the advice I got from my parents is still probably the best advice I could give.
Advice that not only prepares you for the life ahead, but prepares you to get the most out of what is there and who you are – which, when you come to think of it, is probably the best advice of all.
So with that, I pass onto Otis what my beloved parents passed on to me.
+ A life of fulfillment is more enjoyable than a life of contentment.
+ Be interested in what others are interested in.
+ Make your own mistakes not someone else’s.
I might not have managed to do them all, all the time, but those pieces of advice have helped me enjoy a life that – let’s face it – I don’t deserve to have, which might be the one thing I’ve done that my parents would be the happiest about.
So to Mum and Dad – thank you – you might not realize it, but you’ve given your grandson one of the most valuable bits of advice he’ll ever have.
Have a great weekend.