Creating, not cloning

Being back at in the UK, back at the helm of innovation, is a little bit like:

·         Fighting with bayonets on a sinking lifeboat in the talons of a giant octopus;

·         Jogging up mount Everest dressed as a banana;

·         Realising that humans are just oversized devices to carry phones and ipads (when is the ihuman?);

·         Stepping back onto a motor circuit with fresh tyres, doubting the meaning of life and other existential dramas whilst remembering that one can’t actually drive anyway despite travelling at over 100 miles an hour;

·         Tuning into channel Tory to find the same endless repeats of European referendum, charges against youth by feckless adults,  and dodgy trails of corruption – a reality TV show that makes one long for the innocence of the Magic Roundabout.

That said, I’m still having a good week.  The seeds of advantaged thinking are growing everywhere, and I keep getting to meet them, and they are always people more energetic and inspiring than I am, such as my latest advantaged thinking colleagues from the wonderful Chance for Change. 

Plus, tomorrow I’m in Warrington with Your Housing Young People's Services for the world premier (as my American friends would say) of the second phase of TalentS, the quality assurance approach for Open Talent and advantaged thinking.

Why does that excite me?

It’s much much more fun than a banana costume.

The premise of TalentS is that quality, like talent, resides in people.  All we need do, then, is to help people find the right processes to harness their talent and quality and create positive solutions.  It’s an investment in the DNA that defines the wonder of what humans can achieve beyond the limits. Thus TalentS is the first quality assurance scheme that is more interested in enabling people’s innovation to find the answers than to set the answers and then just mark against them.  Thus TalentS is more interested in how we present who we are, how we explore who we are, and how we experience who we are, in an advantaged thinking kind of way, than an assessment that defines who we need to be. Thus TalentS is actually about validating an experiential journey where we discover the best offer by which we can make a positive investment in young people count, rather than force feeding a set of ingredients and rubber stamping what comes out the other end.  And what comes out the other end in TalentS is more like a rites of passage than a policy and procedure manual.  Those on the journey exit the cave as shiny members of a new community of practice. Ready to energise and excite others.

It’s all about creating rather than cloning.  Creating can be messy, like paints thrown around at playschool, but it is ultimately a more powerful way to find the fresh new talent pool of life.

For those who dare to be more than a device.