The HR Juggler

I recently ran a guest blog series which wildly exceeded my expectations so I’ve jumped at the chance to reciprocate. I think experiments like this are a useful way of broadening your own horizons and a useful way of widening the readership of a blog. I stole the title for this post from Alison when she teed up the guest idea here.

For me 2011 has been about letting the light in, and being open to possibilities. I decided that a vital part of running my own business is the ability to seize chances to do different stuff. Now I pause briefly to reflect, these chances I’ve seized have helped shape a fascinating 2011.

I’ve sung and shared many songs. Protest songs, songs about work, and silly songs. A couple of months back I closed the Workplace Trends conference with Human Resource, a song co-written by Neil Usher. I enjoyed it enormously and afterwards Neil and I cabbed it across town to the ConnectingHR unconference, where we unveiled another collaboration and later a bunch of us had a big singalong.

I applied to be a part of the 2011 Merge Festival and was accepted. I recorded a version of Human Resource for the festival which was cut and exhibited as a 12” single in Ted Riederer’s Never Records art installation, cover artwork by yours truly. Ted was fabulous, kept me at ease as I recorded. I still look at my copy of the record and pinch myself. As part of this festival I also got to meet Arturo Vega, the creative director for punk pioneers The Ramones. I spent an afternoon watching him work and he kindly screen printed a top for me and Neil.

I spent a hugely enjoyable day with Kate, Barry, Ntathu and Glenn Le Santo on his boat, chugging up the Regent’s Park canal from Limehouse toCamden. The opportunity to do this popped up on Twitter and I just signed up. What a fabulous day of teamwork that was!

I’m teaching myself to paint. This experiment kicked into life with me sending one off hand painted post cards to friends while I was relaxing in the South of France. It’s continuing, and I hope to put a little more effort into it over the coming Christmas break.

There’s loads more. Growing my blog steadily through 2011, blogging from the CIPD conference, being a part of the ConnectingHR community, walking 12 miles to work (ouch!), and successfully pulling off a Stop Doing Dumb Things live event. Somehow in between all these things I’ve even found time to do fantastic work for fantastic customers, and to try to be a good Dad and husband and friend too.

I’m not going to pretend there haven’t been low moments and tough challenges and at the same time, it strikes me there’s more than enough bad news out there right now. I hope you can take something useful from this unashamedly upbeat look back.

Thanks Alison for this opportunity to reflect on a year less ordinary. Life’s what you make it. You and many others have played a hugely important part in 2011, and I can’t wait for next year to get under way. I wonder what opportunities your readers have seized and acted on in 2011?