Presenting at a Gurteen Knowledge Cafe

David Gurteen and I have become quite nice friends and I think that is fab. We pulled together one of his knowledge cafés and I was lucky enough to be the presenter. The key question was "what life experience has taught you the most", here's how we did it:

There were about 20 people in the room and it was the first cafe for about 85% of them. David explained that I will provoke conversation by speaking for 15 minutes without PowerPoint, then we'll split into small groups of 2-3 people. Each group discusses the key question, or frankly, whatever they want to discuss. Then, we randomize the groups, have another conversation for another 15 minutes. Then, the final rotation is a group circle where we all discuss the topic at hand. 

Here's what I presented...

3 stories and an idea. The first story was Wimbledon, the second story was Lost Car and the third story was Mud Path. The idea came between the second and third story. What's behind the stories is that this experience of living in the UK is one of my most impactful learning experiences and I was fascinated to learn others top learning experiences (maybe to recreate their structure, or just to purely share and learn them)

Wimbledon, I talked about how it took 3 times before I finally got in. How I learned about how the tournament started, how dedicated they are to being the premiere tennis org and how they leverage culture, process and technology to do that.

Lost Car. I talked about my first time in Guildford, how I parked the car and walked for hours. My cell phone battery almost died and I really had no idea where I was or how to get home, so a bit of panic started to set in as I thought about what to do. A great guy helped me out and it ended well. 

Then I offered the idea that most orgs are not feeling the panic regarding collaboration and org learning. It is time for us to understand, embrace and at least consider "working out loud". A way for employee passions and customer needs to be matched up and resolved in the most expedient and quality way possible. I think it looks and feels a lot different from our standard org designs and cultures of today. I think it feels like "one learns, everyone knows" as my buddy Andrew Muras and the US Army would say. I think there's a whole new way to embrace these engagement, strategic alignment, project management and execution problems we all face. A highly dynamic, emergent, agile organization that has culture, process and tools to leverage the collective wisdom will do the best job creating and delighting customers. And that's what it's about these days, creating and delighting customers, it's a shift away from market share and competitive advantage. 

Mud Path. I offered my experience of hiking Cheddar Gorge. I talked about hiking up 274 steps with my head down focused on making each step successfully. I said the steps changed after 274, they became more like railroad ties where you could step up, then walk a few feet, then step up again. I found myself noticing a mud path to the side of the steps. I tried the mud path and funny enough, it felt a lot different than the stairs. It felt more empowering, like more freedom. On the mud path, I didn't need to look at each step so as not to trip, I could look up and enjoy the full view and journey. It was then I realised that people had been kindly saying the whole hike, "you alright", in the British way of saying "what's up". It's just a friendly, informal hi.  It wasn't until I was on the mud path, looking up, when I found I could see others more and even be the first to say "you alright". And to me, it wasn't just the words "you alright" anymore, it was a slightly more meaningful, "hey we're both here, isn't this great, enjoy". 

The folks seemed to enjoy the talk, I received a few compliments and of course I'm always looking for honest feedback. I closed by saying, I hope I humbly, vulnerably shared some learnings of mine and I hope we can now do the same in this room and maybe even bring that approach back to our orgs after leaving this room.

It was my first time presenting to a full proper British audience. I was slightly surprised by what was funny to the group and what wasn't funny to the group. Always a lot to learn for me :)

In case you're interested in the themes that came out as most meaningful learning experiences, they were global rotations, amazing mentors and "before/after events". Before/after events are moments when change is so profound that you actually can't go back to the before state, and you may not even be able to talk about the before state. 

So let me thank David Gurteen again for the opportunity and a great little event. Looking forward to more success and continuing the openness/process to conversation!

Naples to Venice

We jumped on the train from Naples to Venice and our online printed tickets finally worked perfectly! We didn't have to validate them or anything, just get on the train and go.

It's a 5 hour ride, so we had plenty of time to talk and think. One thing that came to mind for me was a comparison to business. The voice over the loudspeaker on the train repeatedly said enjoy your journey in a very nice voice, and yet I found myself looking at a lot of graffiti. Don't get me wrong, graffiti isn't all bad, but it did seem to clearly contradict the culture they were trying to create on the train. I wonder if we do that in our orgs too, do we say enjoy the journey and yet everyone is looking at graffiti, wondering if we see it? Is it best to acknowledge the graffiti, or ignore it, or what?

We jumped off the train in Venice, it was pouring rain so we decided to eat right next to the station. It was kinda funny that we ate at a hotel restaurant in the same chain of hotels that we were staying in just 15 minutes up the road. The nice folks at this hotel said it was a quick easy bus ride to the other one, so I went on a mission to find tickets while the girls ate.

The first ticket machine I found had a Windows 2000 error on it. I eventually found a coffee shop that sold tickets and we were all set. It took a few minutes to know exactly which bus to catch, but we caught it. Then we sat there, waiting for the bus to move. It quickly became apparent that the bus driver was in a verbal argument with someone outside the bus, especially when the guy outside the bus slammed his fist into the window. Great, I got to put on my protective "hat" again and make some quick decisions. 

After checking it all out, it was safe and easy to just wait on the bus while the police came. The verbal disagreement was in Italian, so we couldn't quite understand, but it appeared as though the car driver thought the bus was blocking his way out. Just that simple. It took 30 minutes for the police and next bus to come, but we safely arrived at our hotel and got some good sleep :)

Rome to Sorrento

We loved Sorrento, Positano and the Amalfi coast so much on our first trip here years ago, we knew we had to come again. Without a car, I suppose your best bet is a train from Rome to Naples, and then a separate train from Naples to Sorrento. It took us about 2 hours and I honestly can't remember the price, sorry I could look it up. The second train was crazy inexpensive, maybe €8 or 9 total for the four of us. There's a bit of a trick in switching trains, so make sure you look up those details, they were priceless for us (basically you walk one block from one train station to another)

Sorrento is just so perfect. It was slightly bigger than I remembered, even more kid friendly, even better food, and even more beautiful. It's pretty rare that I remember places as well as I remembered Sorrento though, I knew exactly where our first hotel was, I remembered restaurants and shops, that's just crazy after almost a decade. 

We had great food, walked and shopped, and watched the beautiful sunset over the white cliffs.

Capri and the Grotta Azzurra

We took the hotel shuttle into downtown Sorrento, which was a fun 10 minute ride with 14 people sitting in 8 seats :) We walked down the cliff to buy a boat ticket and jumped right on the next departure.

It's about 20-30 minutes to get from Sorrento to Capri, then you buy your Blue Grotto tickets right there at Capri. There are many boat options for the Blue Grotto, we chose the 2 hour ride around the beautiful island.

We got all the way to the grotto, and the wait was 2 hours, so the captain took votes and everyone decided to not wait that long. It was a little disappointing since that was probably the whole reason we came to Capri, or at least high on the list.

So we are lunch, walked around, did some shopping and enjoyed the views. We already had a 4pm boat ticket to get back to Sorrento, but we wondered if we could miss that boat and take the next one. One of the employees at the dock said it was no problem to take a later boat, so we decided to take that risk and try to get back to the blue grotto on the short 30 minute ferry straight to the grotto.

We jumped on the boat to the grotto with about 20 college kids, so it was a bit of a party boat. We got to the grotto and the line was much shorter than before. Most of the kids wanted to swim in the cave, but we wanted the row boat version. The row boats took each of he kids at few at a time, and we were last in line. Then the employees at the entrance of the cave said it was 5pm and the cave was closed!! Oh no!! I shimmied around and got us on the next row boat and sure enough we were one of the very last spins inside the blue grotto. It was even more beautiful than 6 years ago :)

We had no problem getting on the next boat back from Capri to Sorrento. The girls waited at the train station while I walked up to the hotel to grab the luggage. The hike started easy, but man, I must have burned at least 500 calories by the time I got up the mountain to the hotel. I jumped on the next shuttle and went straight to the train station, where we planned to meet at 8pm. Plenty of time to take one of the next 4 trains heading up to Naples.

Well, the train workers went on strike right at 8pm, so no trains or busses were available. Oh boy. We made lots of friends right there in the station and we all started negotiating with taxi drivers. The first offer was €150. No one wanted to pay that, so it became a big group negotiation. We ended up getting a group of 8 of us to pay €20 per person to get in a big van. Actually, that's not much more than the train cost and he took us straight to the front door of the hotel!

Honestly, we were a little nervous to stay in Naples. We knew we'd be fine, but it's not exactly the safest area with a family. It turned out that the hotel was absolutely beautiful! My oldest daughter and I went to their restaurant, which was up on the rooftop. It was pretty dark outside, so it took us a few minutes to realize that we were looking right at the Naples Duomo! It was so close it felt like we could touch it, so the size was impressive being that close. I think they custom made chicken nuggets for my daughter, with a custom BBQ sauce- and my truffle rissoto was amazing.

We went to bed and heard fireworks outside, so we peeked out to see them and then realized, oh, that's probably not fireworks. We didn't hear any police sirens or hear of any problems, so maybe it was just firecrackers or something, or so we'll hope!

How to do (a tiny bit of) Rome in a day (or two)

We started by taking a taxi straight to the Vatican. I kinda knew where to stand in line from previous trips, it's not the most obvious line. We literally didn't even make it one step out of the taxi before people were offering us tours. 

Our online tickets worked perfectly! Finally, some planning that worked out :) The tickets were so good, we must have passed at least 500 people, probably much more, probably saving at least an hour. 

We walked almost every hall in the Vatican. They're beautiful, full of sculptures, paintings and other treasures.  The big finale is the Sistine Chapel. The chapel is a little smaller than you might be imagining, but it's every bit as beautiful. It's basically covered in every inch by Michaelangelo's painting. We learned that one side of the chapel has paintings about the life of Moses, the other side is about the life of Jesus. 

We left the Vatican quite fulfilled, and it was still early. We double checked and it's true that the Vatican is a separate country, so that's exciting to think about.

We took a quick break at a wine bar and did some shopping. Then we headed over to the Colloseum. We hadn't bought tickets so we jumped in the main ticket line, where we immediately saw that you can use a QR reader to download and purchase tickets while in line. Brilliant use of technology, but a big fail on my part for not having a QR reader on the phone I had! The wait was only about 30 minutes and the video guides were sold out, but we did use the audio guide (which you can skip). It's always interesting to see inside the Colloseum, hard to imagine everything that went on there a long time ago. 

We sat down for dinner and didn't even quite realise that we were literally on top of the Roman Forum ruins. It was a great view and we had fun looking up the history of the forum and what happened there. Lots of Julius Caesar if you're wondering. 

As we were walking out, an elderly couple two tables over stopped me and said something in Italian. I apologised for not understanding, and then in English they tried to say that I was very passionate or patient, I'm not sure which. Either way, I took it as a huge compliment, had a 60 second conversation with them and moved on.

On a side note, we've heard at least Bruno Mars song every day while in Italy, and Imagine Dragons almost every day. We stopped in a toy store in Rome and they had never heard of Moshi Monsters, interesting. And, I'm not sure I've seen a Starbucks in Italy?

We ended the day at Trevi Fountain, which had no water in it and was under construction. Can you believe that. They had a strange walkway that took you over where the water used to be, which had no less than 3 police officers on it. They had a tiny little bucket of water where you could still toss a coin over your shoulder for good luck. 

All in all, we've learned that even a quick hop from London to Italy requires quite a bit of planning. We're having an absolutely great time, laughing a lot, but the number of surprises has been, well, surprising :)

Florence to Siena to Rome

There's a jubilant and boisterous feel to the culture and people of Italy. I'm seeing it in every Italian city we visit. It makes it a little easier to travel with kids. I read an article recently that said "we've lost the village that used to help raise the kids". I think the village is alive and well in Italy. 

Upon arrival in Siena, we chose to walk the 30 minutes from the train to the city centre. Since I've learned the hard way to out in exact addresses, we knew exactly where we were going. It's hard with a stroller, so we casually stopped after 30 minutes for a meal (we still had at least 20 more minutes to walk, google maps estimates are about half what they should be for families of 4 :) ) Of course we ate pizza and spaghetti. 

We finished the meal and made it over to the duomo. Oh, first we stopped at a hotel to see if they'd be willing to hold our bags. I offered money, but they were so kind to keep it for free, and later they even called a taxi for us (which came in less than 5 minutes!) Stay at Hotel Duomo next time you're in Siena for me. 

Then the frustration kicked in. I had pre-ordered tickets to the duomo online. The online transaction went perfectly, except I only received confirmation on the screen, I didn't receive an email. It made me a little nervous, but I came with the onscreen confirmation printed in hand. Well, I talked to 4 different people at 4 different places at the Duomo and none of them were willing to let us in . I couldn't bring myself to paying again, so we frantically tried to check our credit cards through our phone to see if we had paid. It seems as though the transaction never really went through, but we definitely didn't go through the church. After a glass of wine, tiramisu, and a few deep breaths, all is well again :)

We walked into the city centre and straight up into the main tower. My youngest daughter calls every old building a "castle", which is very cute and she loves castles. Then we grabbed some gelato and sat right in the middle of the piazza with about 1000 new friends. Awesome.

Then it was time to get to Rome. We got very lucky to jump on an early train right as it was leaving. It's a little unfortunate that you have to go back north to Florence (for over an hour), to then take a train to Rome from there. I guess it works out though because the really high speed train from Florence goes straight to Rome without stops in just over an hour.

Well, we got on that high speed train and pretty much knew immediately that something was wrong. We had "open tickets" and everyone else had numbered tickets. The conductor came around and taught us that we were supposed to take a slow train from Florence, but she let us pay the difference in price and stay on. Little embarrassing, but I guess it's fine.

So we arrive in Rome and I had booked a hotel right next to a train station. Well, technically it was right next to a "light rail" station, which is different. That difference was important because the light rail was broken due to heavy rainstorms. 

There were many other options to get to our hotel, but we opted for the quick and expensive taxi. We paid €50 and upon arrival the hotel said it should have been €20-30, so we were taken a little but it was a long day and I was actually fine with it, we paid for ease I guess. 

We're in Rome and ready to have a great time!

How to do (some) Florence in a Day

First, use an app called "city planner". The free version is a nice start, but after that start, I went in for the full $4.99. The app has ever major attraction from museums to architecture to restaurants to shops to nightclubs and more. It helps you map out a walking route and how to travel to each location. I guess the only it doesn't have is special events, but that was ok in my case.

We started in the museum designed by Michaelangelo. Of course it's beautiful, we especially enjoyed hand written manuscripts and these cool sculptures holding globes made of gold. The floor was original so we had to walk on thin carpets on the side of the room in single file (which added to the fun).

When we made it to the main room there was a crack of thunder and lightening outside, just for extra dramatic effect.

After leaving the museum, we walked around to a few locally owned shops. Really stuff nice, and owners too. We saw ceramic work, sculptures, art/paintings, furniture and some other odds and ends. 

The Santa Maria Maggiore church is a nice little church in the heart of town. It's one of the few places that allows photos inside. The main altar is quite "plain" compared to other churches, there isn't stained glass or painted walls/ceilings. It actually makes for a nice, clean look. 

Next door is the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella which is stunning. It's beautiful inside and outside, we barely noticed the pouring rain :) Its hard to explain how there are gardens inside the church, or around the church grounds, just know that it's a can't miss site. Which, by the way, is part of the city planner app, it lists "can't miss" sites and I tend to agree with all of their suggestions.

Ponte Vecchio is the bridge of Florence like Rialto is the bridge of Venice. It's a fairly wide bridge with shops lining the edges. The view from the middle of the bridge is outstanding. The shops are mostly jewelry shops, and each shop has it's own little window with an amazing view. 

At that point, the rain let up for us and it was almost cold outside, which is pretty amazing for late July. 

We crossed the bridge and visted a place called Palazzo Pitti. It's basically connected to a set of gardens called Boboli Gardens. We hadn't been there before, so we were anxious to check it out and compare to UK gardens. It was no surprise that they were beautiful. It was a little surprising to see the great view of Florence from the gardens. It almost rivaled Piazzale Michangelo! We drank wine in the palazzo while we relaxed and enjoyed the views.

Walk back over a bridge and go to the Uffizi, which is a can't miss museum. There's a replica of David out front, plus a cool "outdoor hallway" of famous sculptures.

Do more shopping, it's all there, whatever you like. My family and I went our separate ways for shopping for a little while. Within 3 minutes of separating, I thought for a second I had been pick pocketed. I was getting on the merry go round with my youngest daughter and a gypsy came shaking for change. I had to say no about 5 times and she knew full well I was holding a child and a stroller and a bunch of other stuff. I was doing my normal situational awareness (e.g. head on a swivel, like a haunted house) when I noticed a man move away quickly. My first reaction was that he was probably working with her, so I visually scanned his hands and pockets. He certainly saw me checking him over and he ducked away. I thought maybe the camera or iPad were gone but I was lucky to still have both. It goes to show they really are professionals and they're watching everyone at every second, but I was lucky this time. 

We walked over to sit and enjoy the live music of a violin, guitar and upright string bass. Then we got back together with the family and had a great dinner at a random restaurant that we chose because it looked busy. The live music continued as there was now an accordion being played outside.

Close the day with the absolute must see of sunset at Piazzle Michealangelo. This time, there was solo guitarist with an amp and repeater pedals. He played at least a couple of songs that had meaning to me, so I loved it, not to mention the phenomenal sunset over Florence. 

And that's about it, we grabbed gelato on the walk home and just enjoyed the sights, sounds and smells of an amazing city. By the way, on that walk home, we watched an artist use chalk to paint a fantastic painting right on the asphalt in the middle of the road. Great stuff.