WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange: newyorker.com

WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange: newyorker.com

This is an informative and thoughtful article on Assange, even more important now that he is under arrest and there seems to be a concerted effort to 'get Assange' and to marginalize or even close down WikiLeaks.

Arrived back late yesterday morning after very comfortable last sector -- Dubai-LHR -- in top deck of A380, which certainly redefines the way to fly. Emirates have quite a fleet of them, all kitted out in Emirates corporate style, much given to moulded plastic faux wood (yew?) right down to the loo seats! Business class passengers inhabit what could be a smart bit of kitchen furniture, inserting oneself into a kind of cupboard with reclining seat and lots of cubbies for shoes (that must be a first) and shelves, and, a feature of which Emirates is very proud, their 'award winning' ICE system (basically entertainment).

They are also proud of their catering, and yesterday one of the charming flight attendants (seemingly another Emirates speciality), while serving breakfast (which I didn't need, having broken my fast on a the previous Emirates flight) agreed to provide me with an early lunch, which she did about half an hour later, having meantime delivered a starter course of 'Arab style Mezze'. And very good it all was, in line with all of the catering on every Emirates flight on this UK-Oz return journey.

At the aft of the A380 cabin is a 'lounge' with banquette type seating and an on-duty bar man. Yesterday there was a unique combination to be observed, with a man using an airline blanket as improvised rug, praying to Mecca in a corner of the lounge, while several passengers were standing around the bar with alcoholic drinks in hand. Neither party seemed to be mindful of the presence or activities of the other.

Unhappy landing in the customer journey


Reflecting on the recent high profile turbulence at the end of a JetBlue flight to New York, Colin Horgan in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/12/steven-slater-rebel-dehumanising-service-society

observes that the ‘confrontation is symptomatic of a culture hooked into a service society where we all take part, acting out a kind of institutionalised intimacy where real relationships don't exist’.

Drawing on the work of the cultural theorist, JeanBaudrillard, Horgan points out that ‘The faux hospitality that we receive in a number of places every day is itself a system of production’, and, quoting Baudrillard, ‘’”as a system of production, it cannot but obey the same laws as those of the mode of production of material goods." Consequently, the human interactions which are part of this process of production and consumption ‘become just another throwaway item in a long line of consumer detritus. In effect, we are dehumanised while fulfilling a role that purports to enhance a personal experience’ Unfortunately, when this system of faux relationships breaks down, there is room for anger, which is what certainly happened in the moment of truth between Steven Slater, the service provider, and the passenger.

Horgan points out that the notion – or myth? – of consumer supremacy (‘The Customer is Always Right’) can only work if the customer is an active part of the process, i.e. there has to be a modicum of collaboration on the part of the consumer. This is, of course, essential in the kind of service relationship in an language teaching organization (LTO) , not least in the classroom.

If the customer’s ego isn't being stroked, if they aren’t the centre of attention, then the customer can feel rejected by the very social structure which has up till then supported the faux relationship between provider and consumer. So, says Horgan, ‘Effectively, Slater's angry JetBlue passenger was suddenly aware that the customer is not always right, and that she wasn't getting everything she thought she'd paid for: the consumer industry's ultimate insult’.

Ultimately, suggests Horgan, we need to remember where we fit into the scheme of synthetically produced relationships that are at the heart of service industries.

There’s quite a lot of food for thought here. What LTOs provide is a mix of education and service with a built in tension between the two, and in the quite different relationships involved in each. For instance, teachers occupy a gate keeping role to a student, which sits uncomfortably with the role of service provider role to a consumer. The ambiguity in these roles is potentially confusing to the student/consumer, particularly as the boundaries of each are likely to be ambiguous, and further confused by culturally based expectations.

Customer Journey

The blog I just posted is called 'slacking on the customer journey'. Why the customer journey? Well, that's to be taken up in my next blog. Right now, it's time to think about logging off for the day.

Slacking on the customer journey

Recently, my wife and I watched a DVD of 'Julie and Julia' in which an aspiring young author in contemporary New York uses a blog on her year long attempt to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' as a form of therapy and self actualization. Initially, she is reluctant to start a blog, regarding them, as I largely still do, as a form of self indulgence. However, she persists, demonstrating considerable self discipline in not only cooking a dish a day (and some of the recipes are pretty time consuming) but also writing up a blog reporting and reflecting on her culinary efforts. Phew!

I see that it's a month since I posted my last blog on course development. Since then I've chatted with a teacher trainer and a former DOS on this topic, the gist of which is that the ideal approach to course development, rather like the ideal lesson plan, is not much witnessed in the real world of the language teaching organization (LTO). In fact, it's rare for totally new courses to be designed from scratch, repackaging existing courses being more common. The idea of tightly determining in fine detail the aims, content and session by session provision of a course is not one which, in the view of the teacher trainer, would be readily accepted by many teachers, as it would remove initiative and the use of their own judgment. However, the former DOS did say that teachers were required to maintain a record of the work they covered, which is essentially an after the event record. Ensuring that they did so was always a bit of an effort, and, of course, it is essential to have some such record so that other teachers who are teaching the same student group know what they have been taught, or when a teacher has to cover for an absent colleague.

The teacher trainer noted that a course outline was very useful for inexperienced teachers who need and often welcome such guidance. However, the course outline should avoid being too detailed and prescriptive and the trainer was critical of course outlines which advised the teacher to cover specific pages in the course book, to skip specific exercises or activities, and, in short, held the teacher's hand so as to remove any initiative.

A curriculum and course outlines are requirements of most accreditation schemes, so DOSs will ensure that such documentation exists when an inspection is imminent. Likewise, teachers will produce lesson plans and schemes of work. Once the inspection is over, old habits reassert themselves.

What isn't absolutely clear is what these old habits actually are. So, what I want to do is to find out what academic managers and teachers actually do in practice when it comes to developing courses and writing course outlines. I believe it's always best to start with actual practice rather than simply impose an ideal scheme, since people usually ignore or at best modify any such scheme to match their own requirements -- or to use a term that is now being bandied about regarding the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, 'conditions on the ground'.

So, what are the conditions on the ground which influence the way course development (and delivery) is actually carried out in the LTO?

Course Design & Schemes of Work

When thinking about doing a blog, I tend to get hung up on the idea that a blog is for ‘publication’, and since the writing I've done for publication goes through quite a few stages before being published, posting a blog which resembles a draft seems to be risky and a bit of an imposition (why should readers be given early thoughts?) Well, I guess that in fact blogs are really work in progress, so this blog represents some early thoughts and really is work in progress.

The topic is designing courses – ELT courses, that is. And the stimulus for thinking about this came from some feedback from an IDLTM alumnus who felt that, although specified in the course outline, not enough attention had been given to curriculum. In fact, curriculum as such isn't a significant item in the course description, although ‘Course planning, preparation, provision & follow up (including evaluation/feedback cycle’ is.

So, prompted by this point, I started thinking about course planning, etc., which I’ll refer to as course management or CM. First stop: a web search. Not a great deal turns up, and what does turn up tends to be rather more at the applied linguistics end of the spectrum than at the actual CM end. Furthermore, for the LTO manager, concerned with managing a range of courses of varying levels and lengths (all complicated by the continuous enrolment which is widespread in non state sector or private language teaching organizations (LTOs)), commonly for nationally diverse student groups, the kinds of discussion which goes on in the literature doesn't seem to make much connection with the realities of CM in the typical LTO. (This isn't to say that an academic manager shouldn't be familiar with this literature and the ideas and controversies which are part of this particular discourse arena. An MA in ELT seems to be the place for such study, however.)

So, back to CM. In FTOM (White, R., Hockley, A., van der Horst Jansen, J., & Laughner, M. 2008. From Teacher to Manager: Managing language teaching organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) I propose 3 levels, which are

1. Principles
2. Frameworks and guidelines
3. Specific products & services (i.e. courses)

Principles includes vision and mission, and could be linked to the top level of curriculum development which is that of the educational philosophy which motivates the curriculum. So, for the course manager, the first point of reference is that of the educational mission of the LTO, and the principles which motivate teaching. Such statements are, I suspect, quite rare, so the academic manager may have to start by involving colleagues in developing such a statement of principles. But that isn’t the message which an academic manager, such as the DOS or ADOS, wants to hear when they’ve got to get a course ready for next week!

The frameworks and guidelines are closer to operations level concerns and the manager may have access to such documentation, as in an examination handbook, or in the form of the Common European Framework (CEF). What, then, does the manager do with this documentation and planning the course? The choice of aims, objectives, content, teaching activities, and evaluation will depend on a number of factors:

1. Course participants: level, diversity, goals (broadly speaking, their needs, although a needs analysis of any sort is unlikely to be available, and needs analyses aren’t necessarily very helpful as they aren’t necessarily well designed or conducted.)
2. Course duration and organization. This, in my own experience , has always been critical because planning any course is highly determined by the amount of time available to reach whatever goals have been sest.
3. Course specification: thanks to the influence of the CEF, there is a move towards expressing these in terms of the levels and specifications used in the CEF, including the use of ‘can do’ statements (as is done in the FCE handbook, for instance).
4. Course outline: this is where, I think, there is a transition to a kind of documentation which is common in mainstream education: the Scheme of Work.
5. Lesson plans.

The key document here is the Scheme of Work, and I suspect that it is this which is what accreditation scheme inspectors seek to sight and which academic managers are really concerned with when thinking about CM and course design.

What is a scheme of work (SOW)? At the risk of confirming that blogs really are rough drafts, I’ll refer to the definition offered by Wikipedia:

In the UK, a scheme of work is a not statutory guideline that defines the structure and content of a course. It maps out clearly how resources (e.g. books, equipment, time) and class activities (e.g. teacher-talk, groupwork, practicals, discussions) and assessment strategies (e.g. tests, quizzes, Q&A, homework) will be used to ensure that the learning aims and objectives of the course are met successfully. It will normally include times and dates. The scheme of work is usually an interpretation of a specification or syllabus and can be used as a guide throughout the course to monitor progress against the original plan. Schemes of work can be shared with students so that they have an overview of their course.

The key parts of a "scheme of work" include:
• Content
• Objectives or Outcomes
• Methods of delivery (student and teacher activity)
• Assessment strategies
• Resources
• Other Remarks

A more extensive but accessible account of SOW can be found at

http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/ferl.aclearn.resource.id5602

So, I’ll end this blog with a question: is the SOW what academic managers are thinking of when dealing with CM? Or is it something else?

Entrepreneurship

One of the FT columnists I enjoy reading is Luke Johnson, who writes on entrepreneurship. It's an indication of my own ignorance of the world he inhabits that I know him mostly as an FT columnist and as one of the partners in Pizza Express and that he's chairman of Channel 4, one of the UK's independent TV channels. So, this morning I decided to Google him, and discovered on the Wikipedia site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Johnson_(businessman) that there is more to the history of this serial entrepreneur than I realized. Apparently, he took part in a BBC TV programme, 'Back to the Floor', in which executives go back to the shop floor to remind themselves of what it's like to work at operations level. Evidently, Johnson didn't distinguish himself in this role reversal, proving to be humourless, no good at any of the jobs (as waiter, receptionist, kitchen hand) and being pretty hopeless at listening to his staff's many problems.

Well, it could be argued (and no doubt Johnson would do so) that entrepreneurs don't need to have domain knowledge or be good at listening to staff or be skilled at operations management, since the role of and expertise required by an entrepreneur are of a different order. What, then, are the characteristics of an entrepreneur? Well, according to Johnson, they aren't those outlined by New Yorker magazine journalist, Malcolm Gladwell (he of The Tipping Point).

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b1b8c3d8-1035-11df-841f-00144feab49a.html]

Counter intuitively, Gladwell asserts that entrepreneurs are risk averse. According to Johnson, this is rubbish. He points out that 'The launch of BSkyB, perhaps the most lucrative media project of our time, was fraught with danger and almost bankrupted News Corp. Similarly, the launches of the iPod and iPhone by Apple were both high-risk strategies and might have flopped.' And he goes on to say that 'We remember the winners but forget the hundreds of losers – they all appeared to be “sure things” at the time.'

Johnson especially takes to task Gladwell's touting of John Paulson as the archetypal entrepreneur who only bets when he can[t lose. (Paulson is the massively successful hedge fund manager who in essence shorted US housing mortgages.) However, Johnson points out that Paulson 's not an entrepreneur: ‘he is a Wall Street financier who takes short-term speculations, mainly, it seems, using derivatives – gambling with paper on paper'. Johnson goes on to make the point that 'Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, build real companies that employ people and generate value for an economy. They do not amass riches through the misery of others; they create wealth and jobs, and make the capitalist system work.' In fact, Johnson believes that the distinction between the kind of gambler represented by Paulson and the values represented by the entrepreneur is both a moral as well as a philosophical issue. 'To me, Mr Paulson and others like him are the opposite of heroic – they are in essence parasitical'.

It is difficult not to agree with this last point, particularly in the light of the 'business as usual' practices of the banks in the wake of the economic melt down and bail out by governments and, ultimately, the tax payer. The failure of the banks to mend their ways, and the 'poverty of action' to reform the banking system is the subject of a pretty swingeing article by Will Hutton in Sunday's 'Observer': [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/13/will-hutton-banks-crash-refuse-reform]
Basically, 'our banking system is as disconnected from real wealth generation as ever'.

Now, where does this connect with ELT? Firstly, I wonder how many real entrepreneurs there are in the sector. Historically, there are some, such as John Haycraft, who, with his wife, founded IH and who, importantly, recognized the need for initial teacher training. And there will be others -- Frank Bell comes to mind and his status as founder of the Bell Educational Trust is given prominence on their web site, in great contrast to Pilgrims and CfBT, who, in neither case, refer to the individuals instrumental in their foundation . In fact, it would be interesting to try to make a list of ELT entrepreneurs. I suspect that few contemporary ones will actually be found in ELT as such, but are more likely to be discovered in educational enterprises, such as Navitas, whose founders, Rod Jones and Peter Larsen, 'identified a need for a different kind of pathway into university in Australia', developing an educational business which, in 2009, had 'had over 30,000 students a year studying in its network of colleges and campuses across seven countries. It had cemented its place as Australia’s largest private education provider.' [ http://www.navitas.com/company_history.html]

Much of the management carried out in the typical LTO doesn't involve entrepreneurship, and it calls for a range of skills which don't appear to be part of the skill set of the entrepreneur. Even so, any sector needs its entrepreneurs if it is to develop and avoid becoming moribund. When one surveys what is on offer by the majority of Language Teaching Organizations (LTOs), there seems to be little indication of significant innovation or of significant entrepreneurship, both of which may be critical in the economically challenging times which now confront us. Or maybe I'm wrong?

The Customer/Patient Journey

An indication that I have too much time on my hands is the recent discovery, while searching for some gardening information, of a website devoted to gardens and gardending, called Growson you. So, I've set up a blog there where I can blog away on gardening to my heart's content. Visit: www.growsonyou.com/kowhai

Joining such an on-line network with a shared focus demonstrates the importance of having a common interest. I've already had comments on my blogs, and, having posted a question regarding the name of a variety of hardy geranium which is an important occupant of my garden, I received half a dozen replies, one of which led me to the name. Such feedback promotes involvement, an important part of membership, and I can feel myself being sucked in. However, there is a price to membership: if you want to have people take an interest in what you re posting, you have to reciprocate. Given the number of active members in a network like Growsonyou, this could become very time consuming, so judging the amount of involvement seems to be part of the discipline of such social networking.

Meanwhile, I've had a minor set back healthwise which has led to further reflection on the customer journey, a useful concept in customer service management. About two years ago, I became aware of swelling in the lymph glands, the effect being like a mild case of mumps. Eventually, I went to my GP, who prescribed a blood test, the results of which were fine, except for one : the white blood cell count was 'elevated'. She then referred me to a haematologist at the Royal Berks Hospital (RBH), nine miles away in Reading. What I was embarking on was a very particular kind of customer journey, though I must say that I didn't think of it as such at the time.

In a customer journey, particularly in service provision, the customer may be handled by a number of different departments or sections within the organization providing the service. The danger is that, thanks to siloization, the different sections may provide widely differing standards of service, and the baton change from one section/silo to another, far from ensuring a uniformly satisfactory experience, may result in a mismanaged transition. In the kind of medical journey which I was embarking on, there are many baton change points where failure can occur, either medical failure (e.g. failure to pass on information), or service failure (e.g. helpfulness and reassurance of staff to patient).

There is, of course, a major difference between the conventional customer journey, and the journey of a patient, even within a service oriented health service. In most public services, including even privately owned and operated public transport, the 'customer' has no choice (e.g. there is only one train service from where I live), whereas in a conventional customer-provider context, the customer exercises a choice based on experience, preferences and aspirations. It is for this reason that so many providers of goods and services spend so much expertise and money on advertising to promote their offer and to persuade customers to chose them rather than a competitor. In something like the national health service, choice is extremely limited, and when it comes to the actual treatment, the patient is entirely in the hands of the medical practitioners who have responsibility for diagnosing and prescribing treatment. So, if the doctor prescribes a series of tests, the patient has no choice but to conform, or face the consequences.

It was with having a series of tests that the relevance of the customer journey became obvious. I discovered that I had become a series of test focii, and each test site involved an entirely different section within the hospital, located in different places, and each doing entirely different things. Instead of being a holistic patient, I felt that I had become an entirely separate series of things to be tested. The focus of concern at each stage was the procedure to be carried out, and although each tester may have been aware of what the purpose of their contribution was, basically, they were doing what they specialized in, and their specialization had many potential applications.

So, I moved from one silo to another, feeling like a series of medical problems, each to be given a different test/treatment, rather than a unique, individual and special customer/patient. Two of these tests involved biopsies, which are invasive, and one involved a scan, which consisted of preparation (consumption of the so-called barium meal) and being scanned in a piece of sci-fi hi tech equipment. And at regular intervals, to the extent that it became a routine, blood tests in yet another part of the hospital or, more conveniently, at my local GPs practice.

By and large, the service standards were pretty uniform across silos. But, when going to the hospital for a lymph gland biopsy, I experienced journeys within the journey, discovering that there were information gaps as well as the effects of social dynamics among the service staff. When I arrived in the recovery room following the biopsy, there appeared to be some competition among the attendants as to who was going to transport which of the three patients to their wards. In fact, what was going on was the kind of joshing among workmates which is common in any work place, but it seemed to be out of place in a recovery room (where one of the patients was still unconscious) and it wasn't clear to what extent the two conscious patients present were to be admitted as participants in this social encounter. (Basically, all I wanted was to get back to the ward as quickly as possible, so delays caused by the social activities of staff were unwelcome, but I didn't feel that displaying any signs of displeasure would speed my journey!)

The glitches and confusions that can occur in the medical journey have most recently been illustrated over the past week. On Monday I saw the haematologist for my six month post treatment check, when I was informed that my white blood cell count was lower than it should be at this stage. I was warned that, since my immune system is compromised, I must avoid getting any infections and that if I suffered from a rise in body temperature, I should come back to the hospital. Fine. Then on Friday I started a cold. Is this an infection as defined? The hospital ward which I would normally call for advice was closed by now, so on Saturday morning, I called the alternative ward which is to be referred to out of hours and weekends.

The duty nurse advised me to initiate another journey because out of hour treatment has to be dealt with by a set of sub procedures which are not actually managed by the hospital. As I discovered, this involved calling an out of hours number, subsequently talking to a doctor, who then referred me to our little local hospital, where I saw another doctor, who having confirmed that my temperature was too high, then prescribed treatment. What I didn't ask her was whether I should, on Monday, refer to the RBH and inform them. Is it important to do so? Or is it irrelevant? This is another aspect of the patient journey which differs from the non medical customer journey: judging whether doing or not doing something will jeopardise the outcomes and quality of the service.

So, the medical/patient journey has revealed some significant differences with the regular customer journey, which I feel demonstrates the limitations that need to be taken into consideration when importing private sector concepts and practices into public sector contexts and into a context, like medical treatment, where ultimately the patient isn't in the traditional customer relationship with the provider. That doesn't mean that medical services should ignore the principles involved in managing the customer journey -- achieving a uniformly high level of provision across journey stages seems to be a worthwhile goal, for instance -- nor does it mean that patients should simply meekly accept whatever is given to them, but in the end, importing ideas and practices from one context to another has to be carefully judged.

Summer's Lease

I see that my last blog celebrated the arrival of summer. Well, as the Bard said, 'summer's lease hath all too short a date'. The main comfort to be gained from the grey skies and rain is that flowers tend to last longer and there isn't a need to water the garden.

While sitting in the garden during the brief summer interlude, it occurred to me that one of the things which gardeners experience is seasonality. In fact, it's something that gardeners, like farmers, can't escape from. It also means that gardening involves looking back and evaluating performance in the current season as it passes and looking forward to planning and preparing for the seasons to come. Given that so much everyday life has been isolated from seasonality -- most of all in the availability of all year round produce in the supermarket -- it's salutary to be reminded that ultimately everything that we eat and enjoy is seasonally determined.

This thought led me to ponder on seasonality in our sector, and on the ways that this affects managing. In the UK, the ELT sector is highly seasonal -- as is, coincidentally, the retail trade, where big players like John Lewis make their profits during the run up to Christmas. Consequently, planning has to be seasonal, with a lot of forward planning to ensure that when the customers arrive, everything is in place to receive them and provide a teaching, learning and social experience which will not only meet, but exceed their expectations.

With this in mind, I looked to the 'cash cows' in the garden. These are mostly the hardy geraniums which really are very hardy. But even hardy plants need some care, including staking and watering when the weather is hot and dry. Likewise, the cash cows that are the core of any ELT operation need care and maintenance. Letting such stalwarts take care of themselves is a big mistake, but one that is easy to make if management attention and priorities are diverted to launching new products.

So, thinking green thoughts in a green shade has a tendency to lead to management thoughts as well. Which leads to another thought: so often the people I work with on management courses complain of the lack of time and opportunity, thanks to day to day operational pressures, to think the kind of management green thoughts that are vital if long term strategic planning isn't to be ignored. Just as the gardener has to take the long view of cultivation, so too the manager needs to -- and there should be 'space', both physical and metaphorical, where managers can think such thoughts. In other words, managers need a 'garden' to which they can retreat, away from the daily pressures of weeding, pruning and watering the organizational plants for which they are responsible so that they can take a longer view of managing their garden for seasons to come.

Summer at last

Today has been a perfect June day. In fact, June is probably the best month for gardens in England, and when the weather is as perfect as it has been today, a garden is one of the very best places to spend time.

As the garden faces east, it receives the morning sun which, at this time of day, is slanting and has the effect of stage lighting. So, as the sun rises, successive parts of the garden and planting are in the spot light. I enjoy this performance from the patio, which is quickly in full sun light. At the bottom of the garden, the bamboo foliage is back lit, and then plants in the border, as captured in photographs on my Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gravelhill/. Quite rapidly, different plants and flowers take their cue and for a few minutes are centre stage. It's quite magical.

Sitting in the garden on a low chair also provides a new perspective, since the plants are much closer and instead of looking down at them, one is looking at them eye to eye. This is quite different from the viewpoint obtained when visiting most gardens, as such visits usually involve walking around and observing rather than simply sitting and enjoying (few gardens have much in the way of garden furniture). So, today has been a day for sitting and being on close terms with the flowers.

This morning they were joined by Betty's iris, which has put out its first flower. This is a deep 'iris' blue, adding to the blue geraniums that are also in flower. Although there are already plenty of plants in bloom -- notably the geraniums -- there are quite a few yet to flower, anticipation being one of the pleasures of gardening.

As is making use of existing garden stock. The lower part of the south, north facing border has become somewhat bare as the early spring plants have died back, and although the ferns are now well advanced, a couple of them have yet to produce significant new foliage. I didn't want to buy anything to fill the empty spaces, and was reluctant to plant more hellebores as the potted seedlings are destined to go to my son's garden when he moves in this weekend. Fortunately, at the top of the garden by the steps from the patio there was quite a large bergenia (elephants' ears) which was almost completely obscured by pots and acanthus. So, I dug it out, broke it up, and planted some pieces while putting others into pots to accompany the hellebores to their new home. Problem solved and money saved.

In fact, bergenia is one of those work horse plants which will grow in a wide range of conditions, doesn't seem to need any TLC, and can be split up and plonked in the soil and still thrive. In short, a plant that fully meets my criteria for a place in the easy care garden. After all, on a perfect June day, who wants to work in the garden? Today has been a time to sit back and enjoy it.

Garden Blog: trading

When I was an undergraduate studying anthropology, we spent some time on the neolithic, that significant transition from hunting and gathering to the growing of crops. What made the cultivation of grains possible was a genetic flaw: grain whose seed heads failed to burst and scatter their contents. This same flaw meant that grain could be gathered, threshed, stored and planted. Probably this discovery would have been made by women who, in a hunting and gathering society, do the gathering. Interestingly, this possibility was not, as I recall, discussed when I was studying the neolithic.

The discovery of grain which could be gathered and subsequently planted to yield another crop would have been of little value had the knowledge -- and, presumably, some of the grain -- not been diffused. And this is where I can imagine the trading instincts of the proto gardeners would have been essential. Gardeners love swapping and trading knowledge and plants, and I can imagine women in these proto-neolithic communities exchanging information and seeds, giving rise to the spread of the earliest forms of agriculture.

Decades after finishing my degree, I was introduced to another interesting field: the study of innovation. The pioneering work on the diffusion of innovations took place in the context of agricultural extension work in the mid West of the USA. Extension workers were interested in finding out how new trends -- including new crop varieties -- were disseminated among farmers, and that research revealed that this is essentially a social rather than a technical process. And this is also what is also true of the dissemination of new varieties in gardening.

In our garden are many plants whose progenitors were gifts from fellow gardeners. Virtually all of these plants are named after the donors. So, one of the most prolific and colourful of the hardy geraniums is for ever known to us as 'Pauline's geranium', and there is John's fuchsia, Patricia's hosta, Pamela's skimmia, Clare's sedum, and so on. Similarly, in the house, there is Maureen's cape primrose, Damon's clivea and Meg and Hug's hibiscus (in fact, the latter two plants spend the summer in the garden.) The result is that the garden has become populated not only with plants, but also with friends.

No doubt this eponymous style of naming plants would have been practised in neolithic times. And, as new varieties have evolved, other people's names have been used. A particularly vivid hardy geranium in the border is named after Ann Folkard. I wonder who she was? And who, I wonder, was Mrs Robb, whose name is commemorated in the extremely invasive euphorbia robbiae which I spent last summer eradicating from the garden? I don't expect ever to know, but what I do know is that my modest garden is much the better for being stocked with Pauline's geranium, Patricia;'s hosta, and the other plants whose donors are commemorated in the names we use to identify the plants which they originally donated.

My Garden Blog: foliage

In my parents' garden, and in most others at the time, the stress was on flowers rather than foliage. This meant, among other things, that a lot of attention was given to propagating and planting out of annuals, such as the non hardy salvia mentioned in another blog. I recall, among other things, pansies and marigolds as part of the annual planting routine, and, of course, they provided lots of colour --pretty brash colour in the case of the marigolds. Other favourites were cosmos and stock. Distinctive or attractive foliage was a largely unappreciated bonus.

When visiting benchmark quality gardens in the UK, one can't ignore the attention that is given to foliage display as well as to flowers. The trick is to have an interesting variety of foliage so that, as with flowers, there is variety within a small compass. Coincidentally, I developed a fondness for hostas, a plant which, pre-eminently, is grown for its foliage, since the flowers, though attractive enough, are not really its USP. Over the years, some lessons have been learned about successfully incorporating hostas in such a way that their foliage is highlighted and provides summer long enjoyment.

Firstly, they don't like a dry site. The hostas planted in our south border didn't thrive. So, they were transferred to pots.
Secondly, slugs and snails just love hosta foliage. So, the plants have to be robustly protected against these predators. This is more easily accomplished if the hostas are in pots, and one of the most effective slug repellents is in the form of coffee grounds. Over the year, I save these every morning, and by spring, have a covered bucket full of grounds, which are then applied just as the first signs of leaf buds are appearing. Predators are coffee averse.

Thirdly, the potted plants must be well watered and fed during the growth season. Don't let the pots dry out at any time. It's almost a case of apply the coffee grounds, water and feed well and regularly, stand back and enjoy.

Having them in pots means that they can be moved about, although with seriously large plantings of hostas, this isn't easy and is probably best avoided! From season to season, the clumps benefit from being divided. This has the advantage of providing more hostas, and extra plants can be given away as gifts. In fact, several substantial pots of hosta in the garden originated in a gift from Patricia, our next door neighbour. Her gift hosta has thrived, been divided, has multiplied, and next season will provide some useful clumps to give to our daughter-in-law for the garden in their new house.

The other foliage plant which I enjoy is the acanthus. There are three clumps in the garden, one in a large pot. The clump at the eastern end of the south facing border is adjacent to a stand of yellow bamboo, and is interspersed with loosestrife. These make an interesting combination. The large pot on the patio near the house is grouped with a big pot of lime coloured hostas, and a very large pot of day lillies (hemerocallis). So, there are three very different forms and colours of foliage and, in due course, very different types of flower as well.

The hemerocallis, like the hostas and the acanthus, are refugees from the border, where they didn't really thrive. In their new homes, they have all performed with exceptional vigour and provide a profusion of foliage and, ultimately in the case of the hemerocallis, of flowers. The fact that they last only a day is part of their appeal, and with a good sequence of flowering, they provide a fine display over a couple of weeks at least.

The ephemeral nature of flowers intensifies the enjoyment that can be gained from them. Only the good old faithfuls like the wargrave pink hardy geranium and some of the salvias maintain a lengthy flowering period. For most of the rest, there is a peak period, and the awareness that their flowers are only providing temporary delight is, in fact, a significant part of the reward obtained from cultivating them.

My Garden Blog: What works?

Given the numerous constraints on what is possible in the garden, identifying what will grow and thrive and what will simply fade away has been hit and miss. The first experiment followed a substantial digging over of the south facing border, fertilizing and enriching the soil, and setting the scene for horticultural success. The grand plan included graduated planting, with several nepeta in the back row, fronted by verbena, and with hardy geraniums along the edge. Other plants included campanula lactiflora, penstemon, loosestrife (lysimacia vulgaris) and acanthus.

In the first season, the nepeta, evidently enjoying the refreshed soil in which it found itself, proved to be a bully. The other plants also thrived in varying degrees. The verbena provided the effect intended -- dots of bright purple flowers at medium height randomly along the border -- but the penstemon proved to be a disappointment -- they simply don't what the south border offers them. The geraniums, meantime, simply got on with things and in their various varieties provided colour throughout the season, with the indestructible Wargrave pink (gernium endressii) continuing to flower right into the autumn.

From this first season, I learned that best laid garden plans don't always work out. The nepeta certainly performed, but it simply took over the border. The next season, having no doubt exhausted itself the previous year, it simply sulked and virtually failed to appear at all, so it became a victim to a rapidly emerging principle: if it doesn't thrive, get rid of it. To some extent, of course, the principle is self fulfilling, since plants that don't thrive will usually die away, but some can take several seasons to do so, meanwhile occupying garden space which could be better employed by something else. So, I reckon that at the first signs of weakness, plants should be removed and replaced by something else with better prospects (or, if they will thrive in a pot, put them up.)

In the case of our border, this replacement also tended to take care of itself: the hardy geranium, more or less regardless of weather and season, seems to thrive, so what started out as a kind of mixed border has ended up largely devoted to hardy geraniums. Fortunately, they come in a wide range of types, growing habits and colours, the classic type being very similar to the cranesbill, which is the uncultivated form. Some have been acquired as gifts, so a long flowering variety which, if supported, grows to nearly a metre in height, is forever known in our household as 'Pauline's geranium'. It puts forth a small, intense raspberry pink flower, and these punctuate the mid border very effectively for most of the summer. They are also very robust and seem to tolerate drought, frost, snow, and pretty well everything that the weather throws at them.

This they had to do in the summer of the drought -- 2006 I think. The classic herbaceous border, of which ours is a modest example, depends on a damp, temperate English climate. That summer we experienced week after week without rain, and this drought, combined with the heat (record breaking temperatures were recorded) and the tendency of the garden to dry out, thanks to the demands of the nearby copper beech, meant that only the really hardy would survive. This further reinforced my guiding gardening principle, and also led to finding out about drought tolerant plants.

With the advent of the web and the Web 2.0 world we now live in, obtaining information and advice on what to plants where is easy -- in fact, potentially overwhelming. Anyway, some web searches combined with a happy discovery identified the salvias as a drought tolerant species.

I had always associated salvias with the fire engine red flowers of an annual bedding plant much beloved of civic gardeners, and I remember my parents planting salvias 'for colour'. Annuals are a bother -- they have to be propagated or purchased and since they only last one season, have to be replaced. Derived from my leading gardening principle is the second principle: give room to plants which won't need to be replaced. So, salvias weren't at first something which I had considered for drought free planting, until I realized that the hardy salvia I had purchased as Wisely a year or so previously was one of the drought tolerant variety which , happily, matched both of my gardening principles.

Savlias are, of course, part of the great sage family, and come in a great range of types, from those which form small shrubs, to those which do well in pots, or indeed, both. So, the salvias have, along with the hardy geranium, become a garden staple, and because they don't form vast, vulgar banks of colour, fit into the fairly muted colouration of the border. They also have a long flowering life, so, as with some of the geraniums, such as Wargrave pink, they provide prolonged pleasure through the season. And, as their survival through last winter demonstrates, they tolerate weather extremes.

So, over nearly ten seasons, the garden has arrived at a point where certain plants are an integral part of the basic structure. Although this means that, in comparison with the classic mixed herbaceous border, there is a relatively restricted range of planting, at least I know from experience that what is there will cope with both the constraints of the site and extremes of weather. And, in any case, there is a range of foliage provided by other long haul inhabitants (such as the acanthus) as well as flower type and colour (loosestrife, salvias, geraniums) so that despite the limited range of planting, there's a surprising diversity of form and colour throughout the season. In short, a small scale success, which, above all, gives us a great deal of pleasure -- which, ultimately must surely be the point of gardening.

Garden: major works & change

Having inherited someone else's idea of a garden -- together with some hard landscaping (the koi carp tank) -- we had to decide on what to tackle first, keeping in mind that the first priority when moving into a new house is to deal with the interior rather than set to work in the garden. In the event, both the exterior and interior proved to be the work of some years, from which a lesson may be drawn: deal with significant changes asap. For instance, the living area of the house had been decorated in a yellow of considerable vileness. (Why on earth anyone would choose yellow as an interior colour is beyond belief, but given the character of the ghastly vendor, her choice of colour was not all that surprising.) Anyway, we tolerated the dreadful colour for a year, until it reached a point when we could no longer ignore it. And much work ensued (interior decorating always proves to be more time, energy and £ consuming than envisaged, and is a bit like parenthood, with a similar mixture of pain and delight!)

As to the garden, we eventually filled in the tank (or at least, we employed someone to do it), repaved the upper patio and used the paving to pave the lower one, removed the lanky tamarisk, the overbearing cherry laurel (whose flowers exude a very nauseous scent), the energetic forsythia (whose upward and lateral growth required major trimming each summer), and miscellaneous other unwanted plants. Eventually the borders were more or less cleared for action.

Meanwhile, I planted three bamboo, two yellow and one black, in the bed which separates the lower patio from the lawn. These keep company with the cordyline and the fan palm, so all together form a vaguely exotic screen, beyond which the lower patio is visible. This has proved to be a useful spot for storing pots and bags of potting mixture, as well as an ideal location for potted hostas, which thrive in this semi shaded spot.

The planting of the borders was to be the next project, and it remains a work in progress. But then, all gardening is a work in progress. The main lesson to be taken from our experience of inheriting a garden is, firstly, allow a season for border plants to reveal themselves -- spring bulbs, for instance, had died back when we moved in, so it was wise to wait until next spring to see what surprises would be in store. Secondly, if there are big shrubs and trees which are beyond their useful life, including those which are now out of scale with the garden, get rid of them expeditiously. They are usually a problem, often being deep rooted, and will therefore take a lot of effort, as well as a need to remove the remains, and all of that is best done in one fell swoop.

I suspect that there are lessons for wider application in this. When moving into a significant management position in a new organization, spend some time (e.g. 100 days) sussing things out by doing a lot of listening and noting, and then, having identified areas that need change, go for it. Ultimately, and unfortunately, that may involve transplanting or even removing some plants/people. At best, it may mean having to do some careful cultivation and retraining because, of course, people like plants grow into certain attitudes and patterns of behaviour which can't be altered instantly.

My Garden Blog: Change

Next door, Patrick, our neighbour has employed a gardener to make some significant changes to the garden -- changes which have some impact on our own. The division between our gardens consists largely of an unplanned mixed hedge, with bushes and climbing plants on both sides, including masses of ivy. Similarly, along the back fence, which overlooks the lane which goes out onto the footpath and road on Gravel Hill, there is a substantial array of ivy which over the years has formed a high, thick hedge which provides shelter and privacy. Our neighbour has decided to get rid of the ivy, and in doing so is reducing both the shelter and the privacy. So, the rather snug and private haven of our garden is being compromised. Worrying.

Ivy is, of course, a pest, and is best not invited into the garden at all. When she replaced the dividing fence between our gardens last summer, Pamela our other neighbour agreed that we must nuke all the ivy which had grown up along the old fence. It had, in fact, become a weed, and despite being cut back, kept vigorously reasserting itself and overwhelming other plants. Our attack seems to have worked, and on that side, we have an ivy free zone.

I shan't be sorry to see most of the ivy go on the other side, but am now considering the consequential changes, top of which will be installing a new fence. That, however, will have to wait until the end of the year, when there will be seasonal cutting back, and the garden will be in winter mode. Meanwhile, it looks as if we're going to have to get used to a new era of openness.

I've posted a few garden pix on my Flickr page. Visit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gravelhill/

Change: the John Lewis case

In his FT column, Stefan Stern (24th May) commented on the success of the John Lewis organization in implementing some major changes, which included, for a notably paternalistic organization, some pretty hard nosed changes to its business model, with the loss of 250 jobs on the closure of a warehouse, and other redundancies linked to further changes. Significantly, the senior management decided to commission a consultant specializing in change management to advise them during the transition.

He reports that the consultant, Catherine Sandler, co-founder of the London based Sandler Lanz consultancy, advised that at times of great turbulence and uncertainty, leaders need to offer “psychological containment”. She explains that “There has to be congruence between what employees are feeling and how leaders behave.” And she lists four things which leaders have to do.

1. They need to be on the front foot, taking “prompt, visible and considered action”.
2. They have to communicate honestly, on the basis that people prefer to know the worst than fear the worst.
3. If possible, they need to find a positive and even inspiring message amid the bad news.
4. Last – and hardest of all – they need to convey empathy, “in a way that is authentic to them”.

Stern reports that the first time the MD suggested to senior managers that they discuss 'how all this feels', he was greeted with groans because these are people who are highly task focused, and displaying empathy isn't a high priority for people under considerable pressure. Evidently some of this approach must have rubbed off on them, however, and the company has managed to come through the transition very successfully, with sales up by 15 per cent for the first quarter -- comfortably ahead of the competition.

John Lewis is an exceptional organization, but is not above taking some tough decisions. However, it appears to have done so in a way which is congruent with its unique and long standing set of values, as established by John Spedan Lewis, who, on the verge of the great depression, established the partnership model of corporate ownership which is unique to the organization. Ensuring the survival of that model and of the set of values associated with it, not to mention the business itself, the current leadership realized that significant changes would be needed, and rather than shying away from them, they took good advice and went ahead. A salutary lesson in both recognizing the need for change and in managing it successfully.

My Garden Blog: The Legacy

When moving into an existing house, new owners will discover a legacy waiting them in the garden. In our case, the house was originally owned by a lady who was, according to neighbours, a bit of a blue stocking, and the garden had been planted with a carefully selected range of plants which, however, over the years had become too large or too tired, while, during the several years before we moved in, the house had been let, and the tenants had obviously had a very limited interested in gardening. So, we inherited a mixed legacy.

The garden (which, in metric measures is about 17 by 6 metres -- not an acreage) can be thought of as consisting of four quarters, and three main sections. The upper and lower quarters are patios, while the middle two quarters consist of a lawn. On either side, there are borders, south and north facing respectively. When we moved in, we discovered that in the bottom (or eastern) quarter, there was a deep tank which, we learned, had been constructed, under duress, by the estranged and soon to be former husband of the shrewish woman from whom we bought the house (we never actually met her, as throughout the difficult transaction she proved to be totally elusive). The tank had been the home for koi carp which, along with the venomous vender, had long since removed to a new home. The squalid contents of the abandoned tank resembled those of a large tea pot: tea coloured water and a mass of leaves from the copper beech overhead. It was clear that this curious piece of legacy would have to go, although achieving this looked more like being a piece of civil engineering than gardening!

Between the lower quarter and the lawn was a bed, covered in a semi-permeable membrane and mulch, in which were planted a cordyline australis, or, as it is better known in my native New Zealand, a cabbage tree, a fan palm, and a yew somewhat half heartedly trained over an arch way which separated the lower and middle halves of the garden.

The south facing border was a bit of a jumble, with lots of ill disciplined, and in some cases, invasive shrubs and ivy forming a virtual hedge. There was, nearest the upper patio, a flowering peony and a very played out tamarix tetrandra (or tamarisk). There were also several roses, some planted too close to the fence cum hedge, and one which was extensively growing in the hedge. This would prove to be the Kiftsgate rose, a vigorous climber, named after the garden where it was originally cultivated. [http://www.kiftsgate.co.uk/]

From nearest the upper patio, the north facing border contained a japanese quince (or Chaenomeles), an all over the place Forsythia, a cherry laurel, and a mature prunus. This border was also copiously filled with Euphorbia Amygdaloides, var. Robiae (or Mrs Robb's bonnet). As the garden books point out, she 'can be invasive'.

The upper patio included a built in planter along its eastern edge, in which there was a sad rose and other sorry planting.

Both side borders also contained a selection of miscellaneous plants, including various kinds of spring flowering bulbs, some yellow loosestrife and bits and pieces whose identity would be revealed in due course.

So, what we had was the ghost of someone else's idea of a garden. Or, indeed, at least two people's ideas of a garden. Of all of these pieces of legacy, the only really useful inheritance was likely to be the garden shed, located in the lowest part of the garden, the cordyline, the palm and the prunus. The challenge from now on was how to avoid being imprisoned by these other ideas, and, while preserving some of the legacy, attempting to put our own stamp on the garden. In short, we were faced by the challenges which face all change agents: existing structures and practices which militate against introducing innovation. And, as I was to learn, plants, like people, have their own habits and preferences, so over the years, the half formed visions of how the garden should look have been subject to many a compromise. Of which more anon.

My Garden Blog

Having pondered on whether or not to get involved in blogging, I've decided to give it a go. My real concern with blogging is finding a topic to blog about. After all, a blog about the blogger has a limited appeal. So, this thought came to me in the garden: why not blog about the garden?

I'm not a highly informed verging on professional gardener who knows all about soil characteristics, types of fertilizer, pruning regimes, and so on. I'm just a potterer who enjoys trying to translate some incompletely formed ideas about what I would like the garden to look like into tangible form -- and learning quite a lot of things not only about gardening, but about Life in General along the way.

The context: we live in a small terrace house in the side of Gravel Hill in Henley-on-Thames which, as its name indicates is in a river valley. We are on the west side of the valley, and our house faces east west, with the garden at the rear, so it receives morning sunshine. The housing estate in which we live was built in the early 1970s on the site of Paradise House, a Georgian mansion of no great architectural merit, but possessing grounds planted with specimen trees, most of which were preserved in the transition to a small housing estate consisting predominantly of terraced houses in a curious melange of suburban 'Georgian' and sort of modern styles.

Our terrace of four dwellings is in the middle of the estate (or 'Close' to be precise -- the estate is a cul de sac so there is no thru traffic). The gardens are roughly 60 feet by 20 feet, and those larger gardens at each end of the terrace contain one of the specimen trees, a pink horse chestnut in the southern one, and a huge copper beech in the northern one. These, and other remaining old trees -- they will all be around 200 years old -- provide a feeling of maturity to an otherwise characterless housing development.

However, for gardeners, these trees are a mixed blessing. Large trees provide shade -- potentially, an excess of it -- and they are water and nutrient hungry. So, gardening in their proximity is a bit of a challenge.

When the estate came onto the market, a number of the original owners (of whom there are about two remaining, one being one of our neighbours) were retiring professionals. And some of these were very keen and knowledgeable gardeners. So, when we moved in here nine years ago, we inherited some mature planting, some of which was either straggly and unkempt, or had really reached the end of its life cycle. Among these was a fine tree peony, of which more another time.

The gardens are fenced, and down the northern fence, there has evolved a miscellaneous mixture of shrubs and ivy (of which more another time, too). The northern side is south facing, and so it's the only part of the garden which stands much chance of receiving sunshine. It's also in the lee of the copper beach. The southern side is north facing, so represents a challenge since anything planted there will have to survive on a limited sunshine diet. Again, a gardening challenge.

The middle section is lawn. As I'm not a lawn enthusiast (except when other people are responsible for its upkeep!), this has been left pretty much to look after itself. This is in contrast to the approach of our neighbours. Our northern neighbour, Patrick, has the responsibility for maintaining the protected beech tree. But this same tree means that achieving a thriving lawn is pretty well impossible. Our immediate southern neighbour, Pamela, although quite a keen gardener, had her plot paved over, with space for a pool and a south facing border. So, she is lawnless. Finally. Rumen, the guardian of the pink horse chestnut ('One of the reasons we bought the house', he says) is a lawn enthusiast, and has just had a new lawn laid to replace its moss ridden predecessor.

So, that's the context. More to follow in subsequent blogs

First post

This is the first post on this blog, which I hope to be more active than previous blog attempts. the stimulus for doing so came from a visiting friend from Argentina, who provided an informal tutorial on the use of Google resources when we met yesterday. This was entirely fortuitous, as we certainly hadn't intended to spend an hour of our reunion/catch up playing around with Google, which just goes to show how such get togethers can have unexpectedly useful outcomes. Now the challenge is to make use of these facilities -- and to blog -- midst all the other things which demand attention.

My first reaction to using Google's various facilities is the feeling of being slightly deskilled, and discovering that some things just don't work as seamlessly as anticipated. For instance, importing my mac. address list is proving to be a challenge too far. Sound familiar? And I expect that there will be other challenges to persistence in being able to use Google as a tool rather than as an impediment.

Anyway, here goes. It's, as they say, early days yet!