I’ve had a lot of fun working with The Singer’s Gym, a San Francisco based group of musicians and voice coaches who are dedicated to inspired, connected singing. They work with professional and non-professional singers in an environment that allows each singer experience full involvement, spontaneity and vitality in the practice and performance of vocal music. They call this their Gym. They work out in their gym, challenge people, who get stronger — at singing.

Now, as someone who is tone deaf and never been able to carry a tune for more than a couple of bars in my life (maybe why I like singing along with Bob Dylan?) I was not working on my vocal chords with them.

Rather, I helped Ben and the team craft a Vision Statement Movie to express the essence of what they are, and what they offer. I used the technology developed by Malcolm Cohan and the Rocketship. We call it Consensus - offering any group a way to communicate their vision and inspire others to share it. The result is a Vision Statement Movie created by a group. The participants hold a positive vision for a specific outcome, or when a challenge is resolved, or an endeavor realized. Participants volunteer a Brave Statement of their own vision, and the movie is written, compiled and produced as the result of a simple hour-long meeting.

The result can be seen below. Take a look. Compare it to the usual ‘mission statement’ organizations and teams offer to the world. If you like what you see and you’d like to discuss how your team can develop a movie like this, drop me a line.

Thanks to the international blogosphere, I’ve been interviewed by a Portugal-based public speaker and Toastmaster. Francisco Saraiva is a young executive in Marketing and PR, working for the Port of Leixões in Northern Portugal. He heads the Oporto Toastmasters Club.

The interview was conducted by email. Check out Francisco’s wonderful English-language blog - it’s all about public speaking.

The British press reports that John (Monty Python) Cleese has offered his services as a speechwriter to Barrack Obama if he wins the Democratic nomination to become US president.

Cleese, famous both Monty Python and his portrait of Basil Fawlty, proprietor of the Fawlty Towers guest house, calls Obama “a brilliant man”. One assumes his speechwriting would have the same sensitivity and wit as his well-known comedy scenes from Fawlty Towers, such as this one where he is welcoming some German guests to the hotel:

Basil: Right, right, here’s the plan. I’ll stand there and ask them if they want something to drink before the war … before their lunch … don’t mention the war!
2nd German: Can we help you?
Basil: Ah … you speak English.
2nd German: Of course.
Basil: Ah wonderful. Wounderbar! Ah - please allow me to introduce myself - I am the owner of Fawlty Towers, and may I welcome your war, your wall, you wall, you all . . . and I hope that your stay will be a happy one. Now would you like to eat first, or would you like a drink before the war . . . ning that, er, trespassers will be - er, er - tied up with piano wire . . . Sorry! Sorry! Bit of trouble with the old leg . . . got a touch of shrapnel in the war . . . Korean, Korean war, sorry, Korean.

This would go down a treat in the current political climate in the USA. The Clinton camp will be laughing long and hard if he gets the job.

At the end of January I spent a day with a remarkable Aussie, Malcolm Cohen. As I wrote at the time, his Rocket Ship workshop helps people get clear about whatever is their life’s true purpose, their quest. Using simple Internet ‘Web 2.0′ technology you can craft a Vision Statement that is, for many of us, a 21st century mirror to the soul. Easy to say, not so easy to do.

Two weeks and countless hours of searching for the right mix of text, music and images later, I have just published my ‘brave statement’ on YouTube. Thanks are due to everyone who helped make this possible: Malcolm and my fellow voyagers on the Rocket Ship at Ft. Mason and the Sandbox Suites; Patricia, Brady and the invisible lovers; James, Richard, Dan and the men in the corner; my Mum & Dad (who paid the photographer in Derby back in 1952 to take the first picture); my Spiritual Master, Adi Da Samraj for the last picture; Emily & Neil who smiled at the camera in Laos and Limerick; Bob Geldof for Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things; and most of all for Sandra, for walking beside me. And you, of course, if you choose to click on the video and spend 2 minutes carrying a vision for me.

Signed, Maverick

Rocketman

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
- Elton John

I spent a fascinating day at the Fort Mason Center on Saturday in the company of 30 others and an irrepressible Australian, Malcolm Cohan.

Malcolm, an ex-TV producer and video editor, who is an expert applied kinesiologist, has developed tools for people to create and deliver a video ‘Vision Statement’.

What’s a Vision Statement? According to his website:

A VISION Statement Video is a movie about your goals, your Quest, your bold idea or endeavor - use it to get clear about who you are and what you wish to achieve - and then have the world share your Vision.

Mal’s day-long workshop, humorously termed the ‘Rocketship’, uses simple exercises to bring people into balance; defuse our tendency to negativity and doubt; then walk us through a set of fundamental questions to arrive at a place where we could write a first draft of our own Vision Statement. Underneath the negativity is truth.

YouTube: a 21st Century mirror to the soul.

Malcolm calls us to write out our life’s Quest — where every aspect of our experience counts. If we then add music and images to this text and capture it on video it will feel profoundly right when we play it back. If we fail to capture it, the results will be uncomfortable. And we will then have an opportunity grow into a deeper and more profound vision. This feedback is the gift we reap from what would otherwise simply be a Narcissistic exercise. And it can be used to help others work through their issues. There are plans to use the process with the homeless, those recovering from addictions and so on.

Out of the mouths of babes

Key to a vision statement is it’s simplicity as a heartfelt appeal. Too many fancy words or jargon get in the way. A 5-year-old should be able to understand it. I found this out when Malcolm, literally, called his own 5-year-old daughter back in Sydney on SKYPE and had her critique some of the words I’d written in the first draft of my statement. She understood “I feel happy”. She did not understand “Where social and political forms of cooperative community evolve”. Oops. Back to the drawing board. This time with less mind and more awareness of what it is to communicate from the heart.

Once we were clear on our intentions, the creation of the video was a delight. The software we trained on, while not totally simple, is fascinating. With it we created the music, text and image collages which make up the finished piece. I realize I have work to do before I can deliver something as profound as this:

At the end of the day the group who came together left Ft. Mason with more awareness of the possibilities of creating a Vision Statement and seeing how true this is to our essence.

Those who employ the speechwriters, PR professionals and others in big company Executive Communications departments won’t be dispensing with these services anytime soon.

This is easily inferred from a report in Tuesday’s Financial Times which quotes a study about corporate reputation. While noting that business leaders are “trusted” it reveals that many are hamstrung by their:

poor reputation as communicators among western elites. Fewer than one in four Americans and only one in three Europeans said they regarded a chief executive as a “credible” spokesperson for the company

The study, to be presented at the Davos Conference, was commissioned by top PR Agency Edelman. It notes some challenges top executives face as communicators:

“There is an issue of pay and performance and of rewarding perceived failure,” says Richard Edelman, the PR firm’s chief executive. “In addition, I am not sure that chief executives are getting out there and tackling important issues such as the environment.”

For anyone in an Executive Communications advisory role this all means one thing - job security.

Congratulations are in order for Al Gore’s well-deserved Nobel Peace prize recognizing his work to raise awareness around Global Warming. Key to the public perception has been his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, which I’ve already recognized as a masterful presentation. Garr has written at length about the partnership between Gore and the awesome folks at Duarte Design who helped him realize his vision. The Nobel Prize is a real feather in their cap - wonder why there’s no mention of the movie on their home page?

For all intents the ‘debate’ over Global Warming is well and truly over. The race is on for solutions. Organizations like Chevron Energy Solutions are making a difference.

Leave it up to the dinosaurs in the British Judiciary to take issue with the film. Judge Michael Burton apparently feels the need to warn British teachers wanting to show the film about the “distinctly alarmist” tone Gore uses in the film.

… Dinosaur…
… Justice Burton…

Well, hello? What tone would his judgeship prefer? Something more, moderate, more ’sound’? Perhaps I say, chaps, things are getting a little warmer, but nothing to get alarmed over. Why, we’ve been through this as an Island Race before. Back in Roman times they had vineyards in Sussex. Decent glass of claret resulted by all accounts, what?

Vicki and the good people at ANZATechNet are hosting their annual showcase of Australian technology companies in Sunnyvale October 22-24. It’s amazing the innovation that comes out of the southern hemisphere. Four years ago I was blown away by David’s In The Chair flight simulator for classical musicians. The conference helped launch them.

This years crop is an eclectic mix of companies. Check out:

• eComPress and their blazingly fast alternative to Adobe’s PDF technology
• Tallstoreez (have you seen a more creative home page?) who offer multimedia training solutions
• Silenceair who are part of the green building movement providing fresh air without the noise which opening a window can bring (don’t I know it - my neighbor leaves for work at 4:30am and I’ve heard him drive away more mornings than not this summer!)
• PocketPhrase - a software solution for mobile devices, which is designed to assist suffers of Autism to integrate better with society by providing communication and socialization aids.

… plus a host of others.

What’s more, they evening events are drinks parties with the best wines Australia and New Zealand have to offer. What’s not to like?

Jackie Wullschlager’s review of British Victorian artist John Everett Millais in the Weekend Financial Times brought me face-to-face with one of the essential elements of my heritage: the suppressed yearnings of the patriarchs of the UK at the height of their power for virginal innocence.

On the one hand Industrial Britain was all about iron & steel, grit & determination, mad dogs in the noon-day sun and gunboat diplomacy. The British in the 19th Century imposed their will across continents. They were men of action whose deeds brought them prosperity and the certainty that God was an Englishman.

Yet, as Wullschlager comments, Millais’s paintings illustrate how the Victorian sensibility was “obsessed with preindustrial innocence” which found expression, above all, in an infantilism which art celebrated by “arresting childhood on canvas.”

We’re talking little girls; sultry portraits of sweet things “whose ruby lips, longing gaze and flowing burnished hair make today’s teen models look chiselled and chaste by comparison.” Yearning virgins with a “subterranean sexual charge”.

But what possible relevance can the repressed sexuality of an imperial power obsessed with foreign adventures and fraught with fundamentalist alarm about moral codes have today?

I can’t possibly imagine. Can you?

One of the more interesting things about my job at Hewlett-Packard is meeting customers in the Executive Briefing Center. Sales teams from around the world bring customers to HP’s headquarters for a variety of reasons - to close a deal, discuss the latest technology with engineers or develop relationships with key executives.

Many of the meetings kick-off with a company overview and I’m one a number of HP employees called on to give the the ‘HP Today’ presentation.

Since many customers come from across the country and around the world this can often be as much an update on Silicon Valley as it is specifically about HP.

In the last couple of months I’ve spoken to Catholic priests from Korea; MBA students from China; Japanese bankers; spies from Sweden (OK, “signals intelligence operatives” from Sweden) and bureaucrats from Britain.

I’m struck by the fact that for many visitors to Hewlett-Packard the experience of seeing how business is done in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area must be as strange as, say, a trip to Haight-Ashbury was for Midwesterners in the Summer of Love, 40 years ago.

The visiting delegations are homogeneous: Chinese engineers come from China; Koreans come from Korea; middle-aged Caucasian males come from IT departments across the USA.

They fly in to one of the most ethnically diverse, cosmopolitan, mongrel areas on earth.

Silcion Valley’s competitive edge is that it is a unique habitat for innovation and entrepreneurship. It all started with Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tinkering in their garage in 1939 and the pace of change has been relentless ever since.

Unlike many regions, companies in Silicon Valley have access to a high quality and mobile workforce comprised of talented people from around the world. No one racial group is in a majority. This ethnic diversity fosters an equality of opportunity startling even by American standards — 39% of all residents were born in a foreign country. In contrast to the more rigid social hierarchies of Europe, the Valley operates a results oriented meritocracy where talent and ability are king. The region’s merit-based system of rewards encourages the best and brightest to knock themselves out in hopes of being part of the next new, new thing.

What is remarkable about the Valley is the lack of an identifiable landmark. Unlike instantly recognizable symbols such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris; Big Ben in London; Times Square in New York or the Ginza district in Tokyo, there’s no building or street which symbolizes the place. As Po Bronson remarks in his amusing book The Nudist on the Late Shift, it’s not the buildings or physical surroundings which distinguish Silicon Valley, it’s the people. And they are sometimes as wacky as the hippies in the Haight in 1968. There really was a programmer in one Silicon Valley company who chose to work the night shift so he could sit at his computer au natural.

Walk the corridors HP, or any company in the Valley, and you’ll hear as many accents from Asia, Europe and Latin America as you will from the United States. It’s something the visitors to the region would do well to notice. For it’s an undeniable fact that immigrants to the area are responsible for much of the wealth. Sun Microsystems was started by a German engineer getting together with an Indian businessman; Google billionaire Sergey Brin came from Russia, albeit at the age of six; dozens of other Silicon Valley companies were founded by Indian and Chinese immigrants.

Pascal Zachary argues persuasively that diversity defines the health and wealth of nations in today’s world. What he calls ‘mongrel’ mixes of people fare better than regions other regions, such as “the great monocultures of Germany and Japan.” Whereas Germany does have immigrants, they are mostly kept outside the mainstream, as guestworkers. The Japanese remain uneasy with the idea of absorbing outsiders into the mainstream.

There’s an amusing story when, back in the Summer of Love, Grey Line (aptly named!) started bringing mid-western tourists through the Haight to gawp at the hippies, the flower children held up mirrors to the bus windows. The mirrors reflected back upon the tourists the wonder, shock or fear they experienced when they saw the free thinkin’, free lovin’ tripped-out voyagers of the new culture (some of whom, like Cap’n Crunch, inspired Jobs and Wozniak; others like Stewart Brand were early into the web.)

It may be that, by visiting Silcion Valley, businesspeople from elsewhere have a mirror held up to their own culture.