Today, Tony Hall, the Director-General of the BBC outlined his proposals for a “more open and distinctive BBC than ever before.”
One of the more interesting proposals, and there are a few, is the creation of the “Ideas Service”, an online platform that provides the public with the best of British ideas and culture delivered in partnership with the country’s institutions: from the British Museum to the Royal Shakespeare Company, from the Edinburgh Festival to the Liverpool Biennial, the Science Museum – to the University of Manchester.
So what the BBC is in effect doing, is curating the best of what already happens within UK culture into a platform that will interact with BBC output. Sounds like a good idea to me and it’s already happened in the past with one recent example being the Stargazing Live programmes. It’s public engagement.
The BBC is inviting everyone to come forward and join in, whatever their skills, capabilities and talents, on subjects that are of interest to us as individuals. As a result it’s hoped that we share our collective knowledge and that then gets shared with others. Seems like a win win to me, but of course the Daily Mail have a completely opposite view; which it usually does when the BBC is being debated. (NOTE; some of the claims made by the Daily Mail’s article appear to be supposition and are not based on any facts provided by Tony Hall in his presentation today.)
Now what’s this got to do with coaching?
During the coaching process, clients are gently challenged to come up with innovative (and usually practical) options to help them move forward toward their stated goal. Sometimes these options are mere pie in the sky ideas, but more often than not they’re achievable and the client then gets motivated to achieve them, which in turn creates the snowball effect of wanting to do more.
Without a vision, there can’t be goals. And if there are no set goals, there will be little activity. And if there is little activity, there is no motivation, which in turn means nothing gets done; and the status quo remains.
A coach gets the client to shake all this up and move forward. Just like Tony Hall is doing at the BBC.
Want to find out more about how coaching can help you? Then head on over here.
Phil Edwards Coaching 