Of course, one of the big things this week, especially here in the UK, will be about the abolition of slavery. 200 years ago this week a bill to abolish slavery got through its second reading in the British parliament.

I’m not going to write too much about the slave trade itself and the work of abolitionists - do a google on Thomas Clarkson or William Wilberforce - or, better still, have a trip to one of the museums at Britain’s main port cities, like the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

As I read about this stuff and looked around exhibitions, one of the things that really struck me, apart from the sheer horror of it all, was the delusion and collusion that must have been going on.

Major slave plantation owners included the Royal Family, the Church of England and prominent members of parliament. And not only was slavery a major economic force here, its products (sugar and tobacco mainly) were ubiquitous. And maybe it was because there were hardly any slaves actually present in the UK, that it was possible for people to consume those products and sweep the facts of their origin under the carpet?

So, that got me thinking - in 200 years from now, what will people be thinking about our time now? What is there now that, either through delusion or collusion (or both) those people in the future will set-up exhibitions about, to walk around and wonder how we could tolerate the inhumanity of it?

And, on a smaler scale, what is there in my everyday life, in your life or in our work, that really shouldn’t be tolerated? What small inhumanities? What daily cruelties and injustices need to be abolished?

This week I spent a couple of hours being interviewed by an external “Performance Management Auditor” for an organisation where I’m a non-exec director. One of these inspections into how well the organisation is doing against a wide range of criteria.

It got me thinking about Organisational Performance Frameworks in general – and I’m using that term loosely to include a whole load of such assessment structures, such as Investors In People, ISO9000, European Quality Award, Seven Systems, local govt Performance Management Framework (and those are just the ones I’ve been personally involved in).

As it progressed, I found myself getting more and more annoyed by this interview. And not just because of my usual fear of being threatened or resentment at not having invented the framework myself. No, this was something more.

What I was annoyed about is the kind of people and organisations who think that this sort of performance framework, if only it was properly adhered to, would somehow make everything right. On reflection now, I notice I’m just sad that so many people and organisations can think this tick-box approach is a suitable substitute for good leadership.

I’d like to set-up one of those impossible experiments – take two identical organisations; set-up the first with the perfect performance framework; get all the processes designed properly; have a really thorough inspection regime; make sure people tick all the right boxes. Set-up the second organisation with some enthusiastic, directed leaders who know where to take the business and how to inspire people along with them.
Which one would you put your money on?

OK, I know some people will say that the best leaders would put in place those kind of performance frameworks anyway – I agree, and I’ve personally seen them do it. But what I’ve also seen, so many times, is that without that leadership, what you get is a huge paper-pushing exercise, with uninspired management merely going through the motions, ticking boxes, having their attention distracted and coming out of it worse than when they went in.

We had our first family hike of the year yesterday, at Delamere Forest Park in Cheshire.

Nothing amazing, just a couple of miles through the forest and around the mere; but it was truly deeply rewarding to see my little 4-year-old son tramping along with his rucksack (contents: teddy bear, torch, compass, magnifying glass, notebook and pencil, drinks flask - all decided by him!).

And also great to be out in nature, with the sun shining and trees treeing.

The press and blogs will be full of this today, as Unicef publishes a report into the lives and wellbeing of children and adolescents in 21 industrialised countries.

The big headline is that Britain is right at the bottom of the table. Our children are amongst the unhappiest, unhealthiest, poorest and most uncared-for in the ‘rich’ world.

Here’s some useful links:

- the full Unicef report (1.6MB pdf file)

- UK Times Online article

Seems to me there’s two really big themes that need to be addressed:

1) Poverty

To me it seems that ‘absolute’ poverty is right at the root of problems in health-inequality, lack of early education and lack of aspiration.

I say ‘absolute’ poverty because I don’t agree that relative inequality in income is the issue - the more rich people we have, the more relatively poor people we have - no, I mean more that some people simply do not have access to safe and secure housing, appropriate healthcare or adequate education.

2) ‘Absent’ Adults, Especially Parents

Right across the social spectrum, it seems that adults are increasingly absent from the lives of children. One-parent poorer families often seem to be really one-parent, without even the weekend dad phenomenon of the middle-classes. Better-off families often seem to exist without either parent around, as both are at work to pay for that flat-screen TV. In schools, class sizes are too large and extra-curricular activities rarer than before, so that teachers are less able to act as role models. Extended families are less common, so that other adult role models are less available to children. And child-safety concerns further reduce opportunities for children to learn from adult role models in the wider community.

I’m guessing that if you’re reading this or the Unicef survey, then most of these issues won’t apply to you personally. You’re probably well-educated and have time to be present in the lives of your children. But doesn’t it make you worried about their inheritance; about the kind of place they’re going to grow-up in?

Since Christmas I’ve been reading the “Flashman” series of books, by George MacDonald Fraser.

On the surface, these are completely non-PC, laugh-out-loud, boy’s own romps through Victorian history. Flashman is the bullying cad from Tom Brown’s Schooldays and is the ultimate anti-hero: coward, womaniser, bully, heavy-drinker, stylish and seductive.

Scratch below that, though, and these books are also an incredibly well-written and subtle polemic against many great foolishnesses of the Victorian age - the legacies of which we are still dealing with today. Things like the utter stupidity of waging ‘heroic’ war and the consequences for central and eastern Europe now; empire-building in order to control strategic resources, for example in Afghanistan, India and the Middle-East; the iniquities of the slave trade and the collusion in that of leaders in Britain, the USA and Africa; and the brutal dispossession of native Americans.

All this while you get to laugh at Flashman’s outrageous antics as he attempts to avoid all notions of duty, service and self-sacrifice; chasing women and running away from peril - and inevitably landing in the most dangerous episodes of the times.

George MacDonald Fraser’s alternative take on notions of bravery, the self-delusion of “men of duty” and the construction of artificial heroes is a really refreshing read and a great romp through 19th Century history.

I really quite like the hit song “How You Remind Me” - Billboard magazine’s top single of 2001, by Canadian band Nickelback.

It may be just about the only decent song the band have ever recorded (and some say it’s an AC/DC rip-off) but, I like it.

Apart from it being a great kicking, grungy rock track, I love the chorus, which includes the lyrics:

…And I’ve been wrong; I’ve been down,
To the bottom of every bottle…

Yep, I feel like I know what he’s getting at here. I don’t think it’s a pre-requisite for being a coach - actually, yes, I do - but that sense of having made plenty of mistakes, of having bad habits, of being repeatedly, pig-headedly wrong; even of having been down to the bottom of those dark, dangerous bottles; it does lend you a certain insight into stuff.

Every now and then I’ll startle one of my clients by knowing exactly what hidden fears, doubts, guilts, ambitions and demons are driving them. And I think that the only way to have that kind of depth of insight is to have plumbed some of those depths yourself.

So this blog entry is my roundabout confession to: (1) liking dodgy Canadian rock bands; and (2) frequently being an arse, a failure, a collector of bad and destructive habits, an unlikeably ambitious and willful twat - and, so far, of having survived those.

And how about you?

- what bottles have you been down to the bottom of lately?

Here’s a rather annoyingly anachronistic example of the UK’s failiure to fully embrace innovation:

In mid-November I registered a new internet domain name for my wife, who is setting-up a new website. She wanted a .co.uk address. The registration went smoothly, 10 minutes online at my favourite hosting company’s website.

But the registration’s not complete there. Because it’s a .co.uk address, Nominet have to send you a security number BY POST, so you can log-on again and say “yes, the information I gave you nearly three months ago is really really us, promise.”

No wonder the UK’s productivity level is lower than the US, France and Germany.

I had one of those delightful “small town” experiences yesterday. It felt like I’d slipped into a Frank Capra film and that Jimmy Stewart might come loping around the corner any second!

Walked my son to school in the snow; we had about an inch at most, but it was only his second time seeing the stuff, so he was pretty excited and just full of that wonder that kids express so easily.

And then when we got to school, the teachers had organised a snow-disco-arobics session; music and exercises in the playground, with quite a few grown-ups joining-in as well.

Came away feeling that all was right with the world.

Father Christmas bought me a new headset, which I’ve really been enjoying using, the Plantronics CS70 [click here for more info]. If I get time today I’ll post a picture of us in action.

My previous headset was great and also wireless, so I could move around the room and stuff, but this new one is SO small and light that I really do forget it’s there. It’s like having my client in the room with me.

One of the things you discover with coaching is that it’s possible to influence somebody’s ’state’ (their emotions, attitudes and beliefs etc) by changing your own body language - so being able to sit, lay down, stand-up or jump around waving arms whilst wearing this headset is really useful.