Anchor

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” 

Leonardo da Vinci

Informing my parents I intended to forsake the perceived security of a regular job (for the second time) to embark upon a freelance career was greeted with two responses. Dad said “ok – how’s that going to work then?” Mum said “I don’t understand this”. Thinking that these two responses were essentially the same concern I offered a single reply.

“As a member of staff I am a core cost and in the charity sector that makes the work I do difficult to fund. As a freelancer I become an on-cost to a project for a defined task or activity and in that way I am easier to fund and get to do different things with different projects and organisations.” Dad, with his experience of cost centres and balancing competing demands upon resources, got it. Mum, however, continued to shake her head.

“I understand all of that” she said “but why would anyone pay you?”

Not for the first time in my life she had zeroed in on a key question……true it felt a bit blunt at the time but it was valid. Why in an increasing pool of other freelancers would any organisation choose me? I think I snipped back something glib at the time – because I know my stuff and I’m good - but it did set me thinking.

There’s a saying in English that ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’ and in that vein there is more than one way to undertake an evaluation, to facilitate an away day, to create terms of reference for a partnership, to design a change programme. So how was I different from other consultants and on what could I anchor my practice?

For the first nine months I struggled, and largely failed, to achieve any clarity whatsoever on my anchor. Then, in December 2004, I was introduced to the AVI values profiling tool by Michael Henderson of Cultures at Work and things clicked into place. For the first time, in black and white, on a single piece of paper I could see the emotionally rich, energetic big ideas that made my heart sing and brought out the best I could be.

From that point on I used my values to enable me to share with prospective clients exactly what they would be getting if they chose me over someone else. This worked so well that in October 2005 I set up my company – Magma Effect – to specialise in enabling others to take consciously values based approaches to their challenges and opportunities.

More than 12 years on I can say that, although there have been storms, anchoring my practice on consciously prioritised values has done me no harm and actually unlocked a great deal of good. 

So retrospectively I would like to answer my mothers question better than I did the first time:

“I have a talent for Minessence: the miniaturisation and simplification of complex ideas into concrete and practical applications for the purpose of creatively enhancing society”.

Not everyone can do that.