I have had my five a day!
Everyone knows that we all need to have five a day to function healthily in body. But I think we also need five a day to stimulate our brains, and that's five a day of ideas, thoughts or deeds. Well today I had some serious nourishment for the old grey matter when I attended the impact2enterprise conference at duxford war museum. The day started with a truly inspirational speech by Arthur the front man from the people's supermarket. A very entertaining talk where he explained his journey from chef to business working with Jamie Oliver and then setting up acorn house and water head house restaurants in London. The first eating establishments serving a social cause, funded by charity but using a business model. He then went on to talk through the journey of the people's supermarket, a fantastic story which left me buzzing with ideas. After this I then attended a workshop run by the guild looking at social impact. This is one of this areas where I sit in meetings and try to look knowledgeable but are always very lacking in understanding. Well I had some lightbulb moments in this session and feel totally ready to try and focus on this in my unit. After a lunch I had a frenetic session on social marketing and felt a little smug as I am already doing some of the things he advised, gold star for me! And then we had an interactive discussion on leadership which was facilitated by andy from third sector futures which was time to get back to basics and think about have we followers? The day ended with a wonderful talk by a woman after my own heart a chocoholic! Jo is the co founder of green and blacks and took us through her journey. She gave me the quote of the day "passion not pensions" as someone wrestling with supporting a local authority spin out this struck a chord and reminded me how i need to help staff connect with their internal reasons for being in the work to enable us to move forward.
So there were my five a day feeding my brain and making me full of more enthusiasm and excitement for the future. I am now ready to tackle the world, that is after I have checked out my social impact!