I'm toying with the idea of two fairly uncontroversial - but nevertheless leftfield - future subjects for editorial. This won't, I promise, mark a sea change from how the site was run under the auspices of the lovely Verity Gough, but at least one of the subjects I was thinking of commissioning copy about probably won't have come onto her radar by the simple virtue of her having no great personal interest in it. And that's football. Woah, wait, wait, come back! I'm not talking a T4-style Q&A with Ashley Cole about his favourite London watering holes, I mean interviewing technical staff about training methods in the modern game. Recently, we published an article about leadership lessons from the Liverpool takeover, but I was thinking more of a focus on football's modern training methodologies. All footballers constantly use informal learning and I'm sure that the top teams use elearning or blended learning in their weekly routines, such is the tactics, theory and statistics-driven nature of 21st century soccerball. More about that if I get anywhere.
Next on the wacky ideas list: religion. Quiet at the back, NLP-backlash enthusiasts.
I've been watching the wonderfully entertaining second season of True Blood on Channel 4, and my favourite storyline by far is Jason Stackhouse's troubled relationship with The Fellowship of the Sun, a church devoted to anti-vampire activity. A theme that crops up several times is that of leadership, with Stackhouse being groomed, it seems, for bigger things within the organisation. Which led me to thinking, could/should I get an opinion piece from a priest or an imam? TrainingZone has no religious agenda, and rightly so, but should that mean that we don't ever hear opinions from men and women of the cloth? Ex-military men have 1000 tales to tell of examples of good leadership and certainly would provide valuable stories for our audience, but my question is, could a priest provide the same? Many religions have a strong code of leadership in their teachings, I just think the battle might be to get a piece of writing that spoke in general enough terms to provide value for the TrainingZone audience, incorporated enough personal experience that it felt genuinely compelling, but that wasn't didactic or, for want of a better word, preach-y.
Maybe I'll just throw that can of worms away instead.
One Response
Leftfield editorial – leadership in religion
Hi Jon, those are 2 interesting ideas. With ref to an opinion from a religious viewpoint, could I suggest you contact an organisation called the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC)? They’re a kind of think-tank and they write a lot of stuff about Christianity from a real-life business background, so I am sure they could relate to the TrainingZone audience pretty well.
Two of their good guys are Mark Greene (ex-Advertising executive) and Paul Valler (ex-CFO of Hewlett Packard) and I’m sure if you contact them you’ll get a useful discussion about what you want. Their direct contact details are on the website http://www.licc.org.uk If it’s a leadership piece you’re looking for, perhaps they could write something on Servant Leadership in a training context.
Hope this helps.
Best regards – Gordon Watson (07880 736247)