Grist to the Mill is 'Something that is favourable or creates opportunity' or 'Anything that can be turned in to profit or advantage'. Grist is unground corn or any grain that would be taken to a mill. It is the act of grinding the grist that produces flour or profit.
“The horse that stands next to the Mill carries all the grist” (William Camden 1605).
True North offers 'Grist to the Mill' as a space in which articles, provocations and white papers can be posted for 'milling', through argument, discussion and debate, or just appreciation of a different perspective. The aim is to create shared 'profit' through the process of sharing.
A brief description of the ideas and principles that underpin our approach and way of working with references to give some insight into how we have got to this point:
The start of the start
Experiential Learning: D. Kolb.
Making Experience Pay: A. Mumford. P. Honey.
Freedom to Learn: C. Rogers
How come it is I came through my business degree without ever encountering the work of David Kolb? How come one book, Freedom to Learn, had turned my world upside down? Only when I had become involved in leadership learning and organisational development did I work consciously with Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and Alan Mumford’s “Making Experience Pay”
The learning cycle, along with the principles and practices of vertical learning is the foundation stone for True North. To use Kolb’s words, life is an active experiment. Conscious reflection with feedback the essential tools to fuel the cycle. Meaning making is the way we interpret our experience of our own actions, how we impact up on the world and the world on us.
Six Category Intervention Analysis: J. Heron.
On Becoming a Person: C. Rogers.
What’s the Use of Lectures? D. Bligh.
Design for Learning: J. Kilty
So I’m going to intervene in groups as a consultant and facilitator. I’m going to have one-to-one conversations and do follow-up coaching and support for workshop participants and managers. It seems sensible to have a notion of the core conditions for learning and what I can say or do to be helpful. I quickly found giving lectures had little impact on significant learning.
In doing this, my own reflective practice to build my conscious competence seems an important discipline to apply to myself if I’m asking others to do it. I found a peer action learning group through work really helps too. And a supervision group through my post-graduate programme at Surrey University.
For your own Good: A. Miller
A realisation that my past has shaped the kind of person, leader and consultant I am and want to be.
The next steps
The Skilled Helper: G. Egan.
Process Consultation: E.Schein. “
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: S. Kopp.
Experiences in Groups: W.D. Bion
Post-privatisation BT and a significant change process in place with my role leading and supporting senior managers in undertaking very new and culturally challenging ways of working. We have to bust a few myths about hierarchical behaviour and get a good handle on senior team and organisational processes. I have to coach and facilitate…..a lot!!!.....and train coaches and facilitators…..a lot!!!!
Organisational Learning: C. Argyris, D. Schon.
Organisational Transitions: R. Beckhard and R. Harris.
The Psychoanalysis of Organisations: R. De Board.
A senior role in the Costain Group leading the talent and change agenda with a couple of colleagues. In a very commercially challenging and challenged sector with a highly macho culture, my fundamental question and raison d’etre was how to make the leadership development and change agenda gain traction and be seen to be having quick commercial gain? The EI and NLP world was also burgeoning as was the search for excellence. The new corporate mantra became “Do more with less” as business process re-engineering was rattling through boardrooms.
And so into the world of external consulting
Strategic Alignment: N. Chorn.
Consulting for Real People: Cockman and Evans.
The Bottom Line series: A. Warner
The change to being an external consultant for me was driven by other disciplines about which I needed to be consciously competent. The primary one being to focus on the clients agenda rather than being the agenda leader as an internal change agent and manager. So identifying and working with organisational culture and the whole area of aligning strategy, values and behaviour to commercial or political ends becomes the focus. The key challenge, that of balancing personal learning and growth with the commercial or political imperatives while hanging on to the ethical compass of my own personal and professional standards.
The Hungry Spirit: C. Handy.
The Intellect Industry: M.Scott.
Transitions: W. Bridges
Charles Handy was leading the debate about change, uncertainty, unreason and the search for meaning in the workplace as we crossed the threshold into the new century. The professional service firm is becoming an important part of the employment market, and I’m in one, and about to set one up, and working with a few as clients.
Recently and onwards towards True North
Personal and Organisational Transformations: D. Rook, B.Torbert, D. Fisher.
Organisational Consulting: E. Nevis.
The Old Ways: R. McFarlane
At this stage of life in the VUCA world, my calling is to focus and spend time and energy on the essence of what I have come to realise is really important to me and important to this chaotic world. Leadership learning remains at its core. The natural environment and music have been constants throughout.
Vertical learning is not the panacea to all ills, but I’m convinced it has a big contribution to make.
The active experiment continues. Others that have helped along the way and stuck with me:
Music and the Mind: A. Storr.
Finding Sanctuary: C. Jamison.
Confessions of a Janus Brain: J. Heron.
Anum Cara: J. O’Donohue
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: R. Pirsig.
The Tao Te Ching: Lao Tzu.
The Fear of Freedom: E. Fromm.
The Magus: John Fowles.
Touching the Void: J. Simpson
The Celts: P. Beresford Ellis
The Hanged Man: S. Kopp
An Autobiography: M.K. Gandhi.
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull: R. Bach.
Small is Beautiful: E. Schumacher
Brian Woodall
True North Partnership
September 2017