About Me

If I'm honest, I've never been a great fan of personal websites... It seems to me that they're the twenty-first century equivalent of Victorian vanity publishing, encouraging those of us who are particularly conceited to attempt to share our views with a public that has no wish to find our home pages.

That said, I've been asked by a growing number of people to provide transcripts of speeches I've given and to make available in one place a number of my articles and presentations. So this site provides a location for these. And it also provides an opportunity to pander to my sense of self importance and tell anyone who chooses to read it a little about me and why I do what I do...

If I have a vocation, then it has been developed through lifelong involvement in formal and informal education. What I want to do is to help individuals and organisations to realise their potential - to become all that they can become. I want to leave this world a little better than I found it, to paraphrase the final message of Lord Baden-Powell.

My experiences, skills and passions have brought me to concentrate on three broad areas:

Corporate Social Responsibility: - because socially responsible business can be a most innovative and powerful force for social change.

Diversity: Tackling discrimination and prejudice (on grounds of race / gender / age / religion / sexual orientation / disability) - especially involving young people.

Education: Helping to improve people's life chances by ensuring that they get the chance to learn what they really need to learn, whether in school or more informal situations, from teachers, leaders and mentors who are properly trained and supported.

What I try to do is to work on these three themes with organisations in each of the public, private and not-for-profit sectors - and especially through public-private-community partnerships which manage to bring all three together.

I do it through a mix of:

My professional career, (formerly as a teacher, headteacher, not-for-profit director and now at Young Enterprise UK, where I am the CEO)
Communications (speaking and writing / media)
Chairmanships / committee work.

Nowadays, I am particularly looking to do things which:

Will have the greatest possible impact - spreading expertise and good ideas / practice so that successful projects can be taken to scale (because I am growing impatient as I enter middle-age to have more impact and to make a difference).
Will play to my particular mix of passions / skills / experiences - especially, the ability to promote partnership; to enthuse and motivate; to build teams for achieving a cause; to think outside conventional boxes.
Will help me to continue to learn and to get fresh ideas / insights / experience and skills.
Will enable me to work in eclectic, committed, and inspiring networks / teams where we can have fun.

MY VALUES:

Respect for others - the Golden Rule of all the world's great religions - "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
Equity - fairness and honesty in all my dealings
To do my best - "if a thing's worth doing it is worth's doing properly" - and accepting, therefore, that sometimes I have to say 'no' to things, because over commitment can lead to mediocrity.
Integrity: keeping my promises; respecting confidences - When I was eight years old, my mum introduced me to Polonius's exhortation to his son in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Carpe diem - (seize the day) - both in the sense of Kipling's "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run" - and in the sense of constantly going outside of the comfort zone to gain new insights and experiences.
Self-confidence, but a self-awareness that mitigates against self-importance
A youthful, playful, joyful, perpetual curiosity
Balance: trying not to be too intense or too earnest or over-demanding of others