Spark 2016 // The Closing Remarks

I thought very hard about the message that I wanted you to take with you when you leave Spark today. I thought about what I could pass on that would strengthen our belief that Spark is more than just a conference, it is a movement, one that began last year and that continues to burn brighter with every passing month.

While I was thinking about the message for you, I read an article about the resurgence in female-centric conferences that is happening in the US right now. The author wrote:

““Having been to many of these events, and having eagerly participated in a few, I can attest that they’re often stirring and, yes, inspirational. It can be galvanising to be around so many females with superhuman résumés, to hear their tales of surviving corporate battles or even actual wars. You often leave with a rosy glow, a sense of resolve, and a commitment to do more, for other women and for yourself. But then you return to your desk, probably next to a higher-paid male co-worker, and the old, familiar malaise sets in. There was no discussion of changing policies or lobbying members of Congress. No e-mail list to stay in touch and organise. In the end, one wonders if the explosion of these events is a reflection of how far women have come or proof that they haven’t made much progress at all. Why, in spite of all the energy these conferences generate, are women still just … talking? ”

— Sheelah Kolhatkar, Bloomberg.com February 2016.

And that stopped me in my tracks. It’s a great question, why are we still just talking?

At around the same time I read another article that focused on the lack of women authoring business books.

So I checked the Amazon.com top 20 business books in 2015, and the article was right. Only 3 of the top 20 were authored by women. 

Those books were:

• Elizabeth Gilbert - Big Magic
• Brene Brown - Rising Strong
• Anne Marie Slaughter - Unfinished Business

Other than being authored by women, do you know what else they had in common? Those three books were all covering a broadly similar topic, that as women we don’t feel good enough to do what we do. All three wanted to challenge us to do better. None of those business books actually covered a core principle of how to run or grow a business.

Back to the article I read, the author asks:

“Why does it matter if we don’t have business books written by women? It matters because if we don’t address this, if we don’t find ways to draw out and express in writing women’s expertise, everybody loses. We’re left with this outdated, skewed perception of business as a boys’ game, and the next generation of women leaders are robbed of women who could have been their role models and inspiration.”

— Alison Jones for The Guardian (February 2016)

How many books need to be written, how many books do you need to read which tell you that you are enough, before you start to truly believe it.

You have a voice, we have a voice. What are we using it for?

Are we using it to educate, to inspire, to collaborate?

We talk too much about competition and not enough about collaboration. I am certain that every one of you can look around the room right now and spot someone that you perceive to be a competitor in your sector.

We have to stop doing that, we have to stop diminishing ourselves when the spotlight falls upon others. Tanya Geisler, a US based coach who specializes in Imposter Syndrome said on a recent webinar that when we catch ourselves seeing others as competition because they started earlier than we did or because they won a client that we didn’t we need to stop and reframe. This person is not your competitor, they do not do what you do in the way that you do it but if you are impressed by them then use that feeling to consider them not as your competition but as a model of possibility. I loved that concept because a model of possibility is one that allows you to create space and growth in your future. Whereas the alternative only serves to make you smaller and less sure.

Focusing on collaborative growth allows us to drive forward a new economic model that is focused on the value which we provide to our communities rather than the value that we can extract from them.

So we are talking but we’re not talking about the right things, we are writing but we’re not writing about the right things. What will it take for us to change that? It seems we have some work to do.

Spark is not just a conference, it’s a movement and it will take all our efforts to keep that movement going.

Will you join us?

Would you like to listen to the Closing Remarks?

After my talk, I was approached by Elianne Oei of Tipping Point Consultant who told me she had recorded part of the closing notes, from approximately the first quote. It was one of the most surprising and kindest things anyone has done for me. Elianne has generously shared the audio file with me, so that I can share it with you. 

Building a Global Village

On the 11th of March 2016 I presented an Ignite Talk at FIGTNL16 (Families in Global Transition Conference 2016). It was the first time FIGT had held their conference outside of the US and the event was completely sold out.

An Ignite Talk is a special part of the conference. It is constructed of 20 slides which autoforward every 20 seconds. You have 6 minutes and 40 seconds to tell your story to the audience and you cannot skip a beat, because the slides are moving and the next presenter is waiting right behind you.

You can find the slides and transcript of my presentation below:

You may think that you walked into this room as mothers, fathers, lawyers, teachers, relocation experts and linguists.

But I know what you really are.

You are builders and architects. Every single one of you has been hiding your secret talents.

And I’m about to pull your capes off.

You may be asking yourself, what an earth is she talking about?

I have never built a thing in my life, even my child is better with Lego than I am.

You’re wrong.

When I look out into this room I see that it is filled with builders. 

Builders of families, of communities, of hope, builders of a global village. 

We’ve all heard that term bandied about over the years. “A Global Village” but what does that really mean?

It was Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher who popularized the term back in the 1960s. 

His interest in the subject was sparked by discussions with his associate, Whyndam Lewis.

Lewis observed that calling America the United States was a misnomer and that far from being a collection of states it was, in fact, just one big state, which should be renamed the American Union as an example to the rest of the world.

Through discourse and observation, McLuhan predicted that through the rise of electronic communication the world would contract into a global village. 

He also predicted the invention of the internet 30 years before it happened.

Smart man.

The internet - an invention which, while borderline fantastical in the 60s is now almost single-handedly responsible for the acceleration in the growth of our global village and something most of us cannot imagine living without on a day to day basis. 

To a certain extent McLuhan’s predictions have come to pass as he expected them to.

You can walk into practically any city in the world and find a McDonalds, for example. Everyone knows how to order a big mac and fries. 

No matter where you are in the world or where you come from, McDonalds will always smell like cheap fried food and home.

It’s not just food that has transcended our cultural borders.

I am not sure that there is a person on the planet, other than my husband, who doesn’t know what a Kardashian is or who hasn’t heard of the Oscars. 

Homogenization of our global cultures is happening in real time, right before our very eyes.

But wait, at the start I said that you were builders, and yet what I am describing surely sounds more like a collapse?

A slumping ooze of all our brightly coloured cultures into one messy brown puddle.

Yes, yes I did say that you were builders.  And here’s why...

While there are undoubtedly remote village tribes who do have their own Manchester United fan clubs and can recite the scores from the Superbowl verbatim, we are not, as a species, sliding quietly into the sludge of mono-culturalism.

What McLuhan did not envisage, was a world devoid of distinct cultures. 

In 2010, I had a baby. I moved from London late in my pregnancy and I didn’t know any other mothers in Amsterdam. I was lonely, I was lost and the city felt alien me. I needed a village, I needed a tribe. 

And if there is one thing I have learnt while building my tribe, it is that unless you open your arms to diversity your village cannot thrive and it will ultimately fail. 

To survive a village needs a multitude of voices, of cultures and experiences. If a village wants to deepen its connectivity the voices of the villagers must be heard.

Which isn’t always easy to achieve. Especially when you are talking about issues concerning families.

Believe me, I have the scars to prove it.

Have you heard of the “mommy wars”?

I thought they were a figment of the media’s overactive imagination but…

Oh no…

They’re real.

Running a parenting community has taught me that nothing can divide people quicker than a claim to know how best to raise another person’s child. 

It’s hard, raising these little beings we call children. We want so much for them.

We have such immense hopes and dreams for their future, that we are operating in near constant fear that something we do as their parents will deprive them of that.

Did we make them eat enough green vegetables? Should we make them watch Dora the Explorer in English or in Dutch? 

As parents, if we want our global village to continue to grow and thrive then I’m afraid we have our work cut out for us and convincing the little darlings to eat another spoonful of peas is child’s play by comparison.

Our work will not be denying that there are differences in how people parent, but in recognizing the value of our diverse experiences.

Because it is these diversities, which give our global village its planes and dimensions.  Which turns a potential cultural wasteland into our tapestry of experience.

Embracing this diversity has made me a better parent than I can possibly have imagined being without it. It has made me a builder and it has turned me into an architect.

We need to instill a hunger for learning and a passion for preserving our own cultures while continuously exploring and evolving new ones.

Integration into the culture you are living in does not mean renouncing the cultures you have come from. 

If we are to continue building a global village, it will take a commonality of purpose; one which enables us to celebrate our distinctive diversity while experiencing all that other cultures have to offer us.

It takes patience it takes understanding and a willingness to learn.

You are all builders and architects.

You are here today because you want to dig deeper to travel further in this global village we are building. 

You are here because you want to make sure that what we are building will benefit our children.

It is our gift and our responsibility, as a generation of global village builders to secure a world for our children in which they are able to continue constructing a homogenously diverse global village of their own.

A global village in which they feel safe to embrace both the excitement of exploring and adapting to a new culture. 

And we will need to instill this whilst retaining the ability to celebrate and honour their own cultures as they wish to.

Are you with me? 

Then let’s keep building.

1,000 Paper Cranes

Even when I was little my mind was buzzing with ideas. It was hard to keep still, hard to keep focused on just one thing.

For me, waiting was torture, as it is for most children.

To keep me occupied while we were waiting and to stop the whining, my Mum would teach me games like I Spy and sometimes when the mood took her, she would fold paper.

The first thing I remember my Mum teaching me to fold was a sweet wrapper. A rectangle of jewel coloured foil. She folded it in a careful zig-zag accordion across the diagonal then, with her fingernail, slowly and carefully folded it back and forth along its length.

When she gently unraveled it, it looked as though it had been quilted.

I was mesmerized

Later she would teach me to fold paper into the “snap dragon” game, do you remember it? Eeny meeny miney mo, pick a number, off you go.

She taught me how to fold and cut a postcard-sized piece of paper so that it opened into a loop big enough to step through.

Together we graduated to paper boats and planes and pirate hats. Then ever more complicated objects with beautifully coloured origami paper.

Fold, crease, fold

I was the kid who couldn’t stop learning, couldn’t get enough of the new ideas, new things to try, new books to read.

I’m still that kid.

I have always been fascinated by the Japanese legend of the paper cranes.  The story says that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes you will be granted a wish to bring you prosperity or good luck.

I like that idea.

When you fold paper you have to be patient. You have to take your time, you have to get your creases and folds in the right order. You start with the foundations then you work your way up to the intricate and beautiful.

I like the idea of carefully honing your craft, learning the basics, learning how to fold better and more precisely. Discovering what will work for some papers and yet not for others.

It is very much how I like to approach working with businesses. They bring their businesses to me and we carefully fold and crease and tuck and learn together until at the end there is a beautiful paper crane, ready to soar.

1,000 Paper Cranes

I like the idea of 1,000 cranes to bring those businesses good luck and prosperity. I want that good luck wish for every single one I work with.

I don’t know how long it will take but I plan to fold 1,000 paper cranes. One for every business I work with, who then sees themselves soar as a result.

Fold, crease, fold.

One thousand times.