Weekly Report: November 21, 2010

When reinventing life, a solid reflective protocol or reflective practice is necessary - this is the first in a series where Alana makes her business growth transparent using solid action research strategies.

Discovery

What happened this week? - I wrote another article (embarrassing to say one of many) that extolled the virtues of regular reflective protocol. Feeling guilty in that I don't always walk my talk, I decided to put an end to that and to start this weekly reflection on the evolution of my business and ideas. That requires a little catching up so that my readers may understand all the things I have been doing and how I got to this place.

1. In October I unexpected was given the opportunity to suggest a COPAR like program in Bahrain – one aimed at helping the ministry for education to help their principals and teachers improve curricula aimed at creating independent and critical thinkers, capable of being entrepreneurs.

2. My second book is progressing in fits and starts. It's title will be: Action Research for Business, Nonprofits and Public Administration: A Tool for Complex Times

3. I have taken on the challenge to write 101 articles in 100 days – now about day 55.

4. I have started to work Tracesea on a part time basis – she will catch up the publication of my articles to the web, to ezine and to be spun and article marketed.

5. I am actively reading “GetAbstracts” on consulting and small business – I have learned/remembered ways of doing business such as contracts (will need a solicitor) and requiring 1/3^rd up front, half way through and at the end. So for a large contract as with Bahrain the freedom to rearrange other work comes with the contract.

I have found that I have both the motivation and the time to write – but not to publish. Therefore it is a good use of my resources to have that part done by others. This will allow me to put my energies toward marketing RL Enterprises as a set of websites and services that help individuals, businesses and government offices through using action research to develop locally designed solutions and create internally driven professional development. These solutions and designs for training will be more efficient, effective and at lower cost than if they outsourced or paid consultants.

Measurable Action

My baseline is that until I took on the 100 day challenge and then went to Bahrain I had not considered merging what I had started (the websites) with my expertise in action research. Now it seems like a no-brainer, a natural evolution and I am almost embarrassed not to thought of it earlier. Part of my baseline is the previous 5 year project in the United States, part of it is my teaching of action research at CTU and another part are my books. Merge all these with regular articles, which Tracesea is not spinning and web publishing and it seems a lot of capacity has been brought to bear on this idea quickly. My steps to date are:

1. I have written a total of 18 articles on some aspect of using action research to improve life, business, or education.

2. I submitted a proposal to the Kingdom of Bahrain for a Train-th-Trainer hub and spoke PAR design.

I do not have any measurements of success as of yet. As I wrote, the articles are slow in getting published, but Tracesea is attacking that so it should change soon. Then we can track how they are noticed and the relative improvement of visits to my site.

I have also heard that things move slowly in Bahrain – we will see.

Nevertheless I am psyched and ready to take on other opportunities to test other opportunities to consult and facilitate action research groups. Perhaps €500 for a consult and then €100 a month for access to an online classroom set up for your group? There is a Small Firms Association networking night coming up in December and I will prepare a brochure and business card for the event.

I can see progress. And as with all progress, there is more work to bring the other things (professorship, writing, and websites) into line with these new ideas and actions. Progress seems slow when I look at how little it seems I can get done in a week – but speedy when I look at how much I have done this year.

Reflection

I am excited by these changes. It seems as though a long lost part of my personal capacity has been reawakened. This feels as though it may be the end of the five year cycle of change that started with the relocation to Ireland. When I start to lead action research groups again I will have finished re-opening all the boxes of my life that I had to pack up in order to make the move to Europe.

My next steps are to work on marketing myself and this firm as consultants. I like the elevator pitch that RL Enterprises is a set of websites and services that help individuals, businesses and government offices through using action research to develop locally designed solutions and create internally driven professional development. These locally driven solutions and designs for training will be more efficient, effective and at lower cost than if the company or government outsourced or paid consultants to design and implement them.

Next Steps:

I should start carving out time to network – I 'll see how it goes in Dublin and then redesign a campaign for the new year. I'll ask Tracesea to look into social marketing opportunities and carve out time to work with Alan and Tracesea on the Facebook site. Done properly the marketing should be positive for both my consulting, the articles and website and the book.

I have friends I think that can help.  Since John is involved in a business growth group in Kinsale I will ask him about it. Also since Patrick was so helpful on the sites I will ask him to take a look at brochures.