The end of Woolworths

December 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Mrs. Kau snaps the end of Woolworths in Tavistock

Shall I text her back and tell her to bid on the letters from the Woolworths’ name?

Its funny that in our culture, we’re not used to ‘the end’ of things. I’ve often wondered when will this building or that bridge stop being? When will this town no longer exist? When will the last car drive on the last road?

Because, odd as it all might seem to us, it’s all fleeting in the long run.

What’s even stranger is how much it all mattered while it existed.  People gave their lives to Woolworths, got upset about it, lost sleep over it, got angry with people in it…

And now it’s history.

Filed Under: change Tagged With: ,

Woolworths clearance: is this going to be a familiar sight in 2009?

December 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

How many high-street businesses will follow Woolworths into extinction in 2009?

Tavistock, Saturday December 27th 2008. Woolworths. Just about everything has been sold off – including paint-splattered plastic chairs, shelf units, brackets, pinboards, crap used tools, boxes of random screws – even the store’s christmas decorations.

We visited out of curiosity. It’s not often you experience the end of something like Woolworths. It has an air about it that’s hard to describe. It’s not just that the place is being stripped bare. The people are too. You notice how they look and ask how they’re feeling – and they tell you. To hell with the company and the boundaries of ‘professional behaviour’ and ‘customer service’, they’re all gone. What’s left is people.

And you can’t help notice the things that stubbornly refuse to sell – even now, right at the end; even marked down by 80% – the plastic fake security cameras and the naff wrestling action-figures.

Who will go next in the new year? What will happen to the people who were part of these businesses? And what will fill the gaps they leave behind?

Filed Under: change, news Tagged With: , , , , ,

Centre for Narrative Leadership: excellent two day event

December 14, 2008 By 1 Comment

Excellent food, great ideas and wonderful company at the Centre for Narrative Leadership ‘Cathedrals in the Heart’ 2 day event

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by Julian Burton (artist and change consultant) to spend 2 days at the CNL event based at Hawkwood College in Stroud.

Not sure what to expect, I went along because of our shared interest in the power of storytelling in business leadership. The event turned out to be a collection of lovely people all dedicated in some way to creating deep and significant change in their lives and the wider world. We were a varied group of storytellers, bards, poets, peformers and corporate coaches held in a perfectly structured and facilitated space to explore the areas that interested us as a group.

The location was the tranquil settings of Hawkwook with it’s old-fashioned, wholesome charm. There were books everywhere and barely a hint of modern technology. Day 1 concluded with a ‘ceilidh’ – people telling stories, reciting poems and all of us singing carols in rounds.

Day two created some ‘open space’ where we explored some issues that mattered to us. I invited people to collaborate with a storyteller friend of mine, Caroline Keane, on a story telling podcast using the mobile phone as the communication vehicle. The site has just started at www.stonecarrier.org.uk (early days but it’s off the ground!).

Whenever you bring together lovely, real people in a peaceful, nurturing space and hold them confidently and lightly with a grounding sense of purpose you get magic. Geoff Mead’s ‘Centre for Narrative Leadership’ creates that magic – and by the end of the event, I realised that almost by accident, I’d spent two days feeding my heart, not my intellect.

Everywhere I go at the moment it seems like when you scratch the surface, people long for change – for something bigger than just them; for something more meaningful in their lives than the inexorable path to environmental, financial and spiritual bankruptcy we seem to be on. If you’re looking for a place to explore that yearning, CNL is a good place to start.

[Geoff - if you're reading this a) thanks for a great couple of days and b) please get involved with www.stonecarrier.org.uk and c) hurry up and get your site at the top of Google for 'centre for narrative leadership'. Anything I can do to help, please just get in touch]

Filed Under: change Tagged With: , , , ,
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