I woke up at Cumberland at 7:30am and began the day with a short jog around the grounds of the Windsor Park. It was another beautiful day, with our group again being spoiled by the gorgeous, sunny weather in England.
After breakfast, the innovators gathered outside for some parachute activities that emphasized teamwork and communication. Immediately after, we continued our workshop with an activity on goal setting and a “bulls-eye” method for mapping out that goal. Each participant was asked to come up with an organizational or personal goal and I choose for my goal to have at least 12 paid speaking engagements in 2011. We shared our goals in small groups, and solicited feedback amongst the others. I noticed that a lot of the other participants didn’t have goals that were specific or measurable, so I’m glad that we were able to address that during the session.
Back Grounds of Cumberland Lodge, Windsor
Our lunch on Saturday was Spaghetti Bolognese served in the backyard at Cumberland. We were also asked during this time if we would like to attend a church service the following day. In order to attend, we needed to submit our names, place of birth, and nationalities. All the security indicated that there might be a special visitor at the service. I’m not at all religious, but clearly, the cultural experience of attending church at Windsor was enticing, so I submitted my information. More to come on this in my Day 5 post…
After lunch, Rob and I had been asked in advance to lead a workshop for the group on up-scaling your organization. Rob and I had put together a solid workshop that gave an overview, examples, and methodologies on growing organizations. For the second part, we split our group into two, which each half assigned to analyze the opportunity for up-scaling a different project. I led a group that focused on Jones and Judith’s Ghanaian educational project, while Rob led a discussion on David’s River project in Australia. The workshop went so well that we even extended the allotted time by more than 45 minutes and I hope that the activity was very helpful for the two featured projects.
In front of Cumberland Lodge with Rob Aronson
Charlie Murphy, the facilitator gave me three great pieces of advice from my workshop: 1) Slow down when you present 2) Ask more questions from the group instead of just sharing all of the knowledge yourself 3) Check in with the group at several times to make sure that everyone is still on the same page.
On Saturday afternoon, the group switched its focus from the workshop to preparing a presentation that would be given in front of Peter Cruddas, HRH Prince Edward, and members of the Young Fellowship at Buckingham Palace on Monday. The group brainstormed some key ideas, and then David Speirs and I sat down to actually write the script. Within a couple of hours, we have completed a powerful, seven minute presentation that included aspects about all of our projects, social innovation, award involvement, and the role of community. Fortunately, my writing was well received by the other participants and staff members. In the evening, we did some further editing on the script, broke up the spoken parts, and practiced our roles.
Fully exhausted from writing, I collapsed in bed before midnight, excited for the day ahead.