58Twelve’s research revealed that many potential funders held a misplaced perception that any funds provided would ultimately be for the benefit of the partners. While the mis-perception could have been corrected in a face-to-face meeting, those face-to-face opportunities were not arising because applications were failing at the first stage.

We worked with the partners to unpack their options. An obvious solution would have been to leave things unchanged and abandon attempts to access third-party grant funding. However, it was clear that for the vision to reach its full potential, third party funding would be vital.

Working with the partnership lawyers and tax advisers, 58Twelve took the lead role in incorporating the partnership as a not-for-profit company, a process that was competed successfully with minimal operational impact.

Since then, the Company has secured several substantial grants, which have facilitated capital investment that has helped to move the organisation towards the fulfilment of its vision.

No. The plot, the romance, the thrills and the twists and turns are the fluff around the edges, the icing on the cake; the thing that keeps us engaged is character – maybe just one character, or maybe several. At the heart of every good story is a character with whom we can connect. Sometimes we connect through empathy, sometimes through disgust, and sometimes we can’t explain why we connected, we just did.

I guarantee that for every story you have ever thought to be good, if I asked you why you would talk about characters in that story. Take movies – we buy because the pitch (the trailer, the blurb, the write-ups) persuades us it’s worth a look. Whether we watch to the end depends on what we find inside. The best car chases, the most spectacular effects, the steamiest romances will only hold our interest so far. We may stay sat down to the end if for no other reason than we bought the ticket so we’ll damn well get our money’s worth, but we’ll only be engaged to the end if we connected with a character in the story.

And the same is true in business: at the heart of every great business is a great story; and while the story may be one of triumph over adversity, or the journey from rags to riches, or of struggle and breakthrough, at it’s heart will be a character with whom we connect. Potential investors will look through the numbers, they’ll assess the product, they’ll review the market; but even if every box is ticked the answer is still in the balance. The same is true of potential clients: the slickest pitch, the most elegant of solutions will not guarantee you the business. Ticking boxes simply gets you through the door.

So what’s your story? However you view yourself, you have a story to tell, trust me, and that story will set you apart from the rest. It doesn’t have to be a blockbuster, it doesn’t have to be exciting, it just has to be true, and it has to be you. What made you who you are? What shaped your thinking? What highs and lows did you experience along the journey? What is your passion? What drives you? What excites you? What disappoints you? What frustrates you? What makes your heart leap?

Learn to open up, learn to connect your product, whatever it is, with your essence. Sure you need the slick pitch and the great message to get you that appointment, but when the powerpoint is done, the video is finished, the demonstration complete, what will answer the question in every potential investor, client or customer’s mind – ‘why should I buy?’.

You. You will answer that question with your story. As people connect your product with you you will answer that question. Not everyone will like your story, but it’s your story so don’t change it to suit your audience. Stay true to your story and you will connect with the right people at the right time. Stay true to your story and you will find clients, customers and investors with whom you will soar because your story captured them.

You are in a story, so shape it, live it and tell it.

Obtaining clarity is particularly pertinent for me at the moment, hence deciding to share a few thoughts. The nature of the work my team does means that each assignment generally brings with it numerous strands and a variety of required outcomes; picking your way through that minefield to deliver what is required can be hazardous and often treacherous, to say the least.

A primary source of stress is confusion, and where you find confusion you will also find impeded productivity and inefficiency. When deadlines are missed and objectives aren’t met it is an easy response to blame the task-setter for not being clear, and often that is the case, but blame doesn’t make what has been produced right, more relevant, or on-time, so the consequences remain unchanged. In fact, blame simply increases stress and introduces despondency, as it brings with it a sense of helplessness.

There is a responsibility on those of us to whom assignments are given to take control of the situation. I am encouraging my team to ensure that they do not walk away from a meeting with a fresh piece of work without also taking with them a clearly defined, and agreed, set of outcomes – primary and secondary, and a clear deadline. While this doesn’t eliminate the task-setter deciding what has been produced is not what he or she wanted, it does ensure that the task-doer is able to deliver what the work-giver agreed he or she wanted.

One thing that obtaining clarity is not about is abdicating responsibility. Nor is it about being able to throw your hands in the air and say ‘well you said…’ in an attempt to cast blame. Of course, if both parties agree on the goal into which the ball is to be struck then it is not the fault of the task-doer if the task-setter then decides it was the wrong goal in the first place. However, having said that, the task doer can take steps to ensure that shooting into the ‘wrong goal’ is avoided; all this requires is a little pro-activity.

Obtaining clarity is not a one-off exercise – it is a process; it is about setting a route to a successful outcome. As well as achieving clarity in that first meeting, there is a requirement to proactively manage not only the task, but the person giving the task right up to the task deadline. Things can change – sometimes we need to see a draft of something to realise that what we asked for was not what we wanted – and so ongoing review is integral to clarity.

Obviously, each task needs to be assessed on its own merits, and the approach taken needs to be relevant to the scale and scope of the assignment: clearly a task requiring a couple of hours work will be tackled differently from one that will span days, weeks or months. But there are certain principles that apply across the board.

Firstly, do not leave that first meeting without knowing at least the primary objective, the deadline, the required outcome and the parties with an interest in the task. Where possible look to identify any secondary agendas and any dependencies. Dependencies are, unsurprisingly, things required to complete the task for which we depend upon others – for example data that we need to obtain from another team. Identifying dependencies is not about establishing a potential scapegoat, but rather about ensuring that the task-setter realises that the task may depend on input from other parties, and that there is, therefore, an inherent risk within the task that may or may not hinder delivery.

Secondly, set up review milestones. Whether the job is a couple of hours or a couple of months, build in review points. If, for example, a task is given to you at 11am with a deadline of 2pm, arrange to meet with the work-giver to review progress at say 12:30 (if sufficient progress will have been made by then). What this does is ensure that the originally set trajectory is still the right one, and avoids the 2pm deadline arriving and the provided ‘solution’ being thrown out as not being what was required, even though it does meet the requirements as they were originally stated. If your task spans a longer period of time then set up regular review meetings – the shape and direction of a task can change as it develops, and timelines can be affected by factors internal to the project (dependencies, sickness etc) and external to the project (additional ‘urgent’ work arriving etc).

Finally, do not leave that meeting, or any subsequent review meetings, without agreement as to the way forward, including objectives, secondary objectives, outcomes and deadlines. Ensuring that every party with an interest in the task is in agreement goes a long way to achieving a good outcome. With one particular task-setter I often say three or four times and in three or four different ways what I believe we are looking to achieve, how we are looking to achieve it and by when; and, generally speaking, this is very effective in ensuring we both stay on the same page.

Ensuring clarity will not eliminate stress, nor will it guarantee a successful outcome – anything with a human factor is inherently fraught with danger in that respect – but it will help manage stress and deliver good quality outcomes that have a very good prospect of hitting the mark.

As you may expect, the Lite version is, well, lightweight. That said, depending on your needs it still offers an excellent alarm clock. You can choose colours, fonts and one from 10 available sounds (including an acoustic guitar, bamboo chimes, birds, rain, wind and a piano) to rouse you from your slumber. You can also choose one of the tranquil options to fall asleep to, using the timer function to automatically stop the sound of the ocean, or a bubbling brook or whatever you choose from the available list of 10 after a time you determine (in increments of 1 minute). If you would prefer a different sound from those within the application you can record your own sounds using the ‘record’ function built into Relax Alarm Clock .

I started off with the Lite version, but it lacked a few features I wanted, which, needless to say, were available in the full version; who’d have thought it . As you’d expect, the full version includes all of the features in the Lite version and more.

The main feature that was lacking for me in the Lite version was a ‘snooze’ function. This is included in the full version, and can be set to any length you desire, in increments of 1 minute. While I usually get up as soon as my alarm goes off, the option to snooze it ‘just-in-case’ I doze back off to sleep is a crutch I wasn’t prepared to throw away. The function is easy to set and even easier to operate: when the alarm goes off two large buttons appear – a red ‘snooze’ option and a green ‘dismiss’ option. Both snooze and dismiss work faultlessly, as you’d expect.

Another great feature of the full version is the ability to tap the time display and have the app throw up all the settings, without the need to come out of the app to make changes through the main settings screens, as is required by the Lite version. You can change sounds, volumes, sleep times, fonts, colours and time format from within the applications options screens, which is very handy.

Nice touches in the full version include the ability to be able to slide your finger left to right across the screen to dim or brighten the display, which is a great if you like a dark room; another nicety is the range of sounds – a massive 64 tunes or noises ranging from the soporiphic (presumably to get you into sleep rather than get you out of it) and the in-your-face (for example white noise – guaranteed to get you into the here-and-now without compromise!) Personally I use the ‘Fiddle’ – irritating enough to force me out of bed but not so brash that it scares me into the day.

Both versions allow either landscape or portrait display; I tend to use portrait as I sit my iPhone in a dock by my bed. It is worth noting two things: first, as you would expect the app won’t run in the background and, therefore, needs to be running to work, which will drain your battery; so, secondly, it is worth making sure your phone is on a power supply if you are relying on this to get you to work on time and your iPhone to still have sufficient charge for the day ahead.

Since installing this app I have ditched my clock radio altogether, and often find myself flicking it on just to give me a clock if I am in hotel or some other place without the time on view. If you need/want a good clock and/or alarm, you could certainly do a lot worse than this app. �2.99 well spent, in my opinion.

As a personal aside, I prefer comment that’s apolitical, but I’ll always take a broadsheet over a tabloid, and if I had to pick a broadsheet that had a bias it’d be The Daily Telegraph. So, in the absence of an iPhone app from The Independent, one from the Telegraph is the next best thing.

In fairness, the app gives you nothing you can’t get from the paper’s own website, but what it does do is offer you all of that content in a neat, quick, easy-to-navigate, pleasing-on-the-eye interface at a price-tag of �Free.

Whomever designed this app gave it some thought, and it has a genuine ‘Mac’ feel to it, and for that reason alone it deserves to be on every iPhone. Tap the icon, a tell-tale calligraphic ‘T’ on a blue background, and the app appears as a blue screen onto which the a larger version of the aforementioned black ‘T’ fades in and zooms into view, spinning as it does.

Once loaded, the app presents a menu that offers ‘News’, ‘Sport’, ‘Finance’, ‘Travel’, ‘Motoring’, ‘Technology’, and ‘Telegraph TV’. Tapping the main heading that you want will bring the spinning black ‘T’ on a blue background into view, and a counter that alerts you to the progress of the story downloads. Each section will load the last 51 (no idea why ’51′) stories in that section.

Once your section is loaded, which is generally done pretty quickly, you are presented with a list of stories in chronological order, each with a heading, a thumbnail picture and a quick intro paragraph, all looking rather smart with white text on a black background. Tapping the ‘In Full’ button will load the full story, which is given to you in the more traditional back text on a white background.

A major advantage of this application is that it is not simply a neat portal into the Telegraph’s own website, but rather it is a stand-alone news-source, with stories being available from within the app itself, making it quicker and easier to use than some news readers. The flipside, however, is that you don’t get a breadth of opinion – you get the Telegraph’s view and that’s your lot.

I use this daily and find that it allows me to be targeted in my reading, keeping abreast of main headlines and going deeper into the stories that interest me without having to scan page after page of a newspaper. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in tracking a single news source.

Ultimately it was my good friend Rob GT‘s constant eulogising about this app that wore me down and I decided to part with some hard-earned; and I’m glad I did – this app simply rocks.

I don’t ‘tweet’ a great deal, but that was, in part at least, due to the faff created by using some of the free offerings; don’t get me wrong – some are great – but I don’t really have time to tweet all day, so if I am to engage with the ‘Twitterverse’, then simplicity of operation is key. In Twittelator Pro you get a feature-rich, simple to use and generally appealing vehicle with which to navigate the world of Twitter, and whether you ‘Tweet’ once a week, once a day, or, as some people I follow seem to do with ease, once (or more) an hour, Twittelator Pro will not disappoint you.

In terms of appearance, the default display is a charcoal grey, which looks efficient without being harsh, and the text is clear and easy to read. The use of shadow provides a smooth aesthetic, making each tweet easy to identify and read. Scrolling is smooth and switching between screens is quick and done by tapping the buttons at the bottom of the screen, which offer the choice of: friends, mentions, messages, settings, and more.

Writing tweets is easy and efficient, and made even better by being able to compose your posts in landscape mode, offering an easier to use keyboard. But the niceties don’t end with a widescreen view: auto shortening links; auto shortening tweets; automatic adding of hash tags from a saved list; and copy and paste of links, tweets and more. All of these features make tweeting quick and painless. Add to that the fantastic interface for choosing response options, such as whether to retweet, reply, message, copy tweets, copy links to tweets, make a tweet a favourite or e-mail a tweet and it really doesn’t get much better.

Reading tweets is equally easy, with a simple tap on the ‘tweeter’s’ picture bringing up that person’s profile, or tapping their name bringing up the response options. Links are easily accessed and can be viewed within the app itself or in Safari, depending upon what option you have selected, and thumbnails of tweeted images are displayed with tweets, allowing easy access to full-size versions with a simple tap.

The app is highly configurable with three colour schemes, options for font size and numerous other tweaks available: number of tweets to supply in view, link shortening service to use, whether or not to display your location, display order, refresh rates, how to treat images, and the list goes on. But perhaps the killer option is the option to add a Safari bookmarklet: following the simple instal procedure adds a java applet to Safari that allows you to send any page you visit directly to a tweet. Using this feature is easy-peasy: arrive at a page you want to share, call up the bookmarks, tap your Twittelator Pro bookmark, wait a few seconds while Twittelator Pro launches, and get writing in the pre-prepared tweet that included the URL you just visited.

And if all of that was not enough, even the app icon shows a great attention to detail, an attention which is plain for all to see right through the app. If you use Twitter already then this is a must-have app, and if you don’t use Twitter you should start jut so you can use Twittelator Pro

My guess is you probably answer questions like that in a similar way to me – most people seem to respond that way.  Well, I had a video conference the other night and it was suggested that I let the other person have a bio before the chat.  I received an example, and set to work producing one.  It was a hard but really great exercise to do.  I’ve posted it below; why not try doing one yourself?

Personal Vision

A generation of people released to live the life they were made for; alive to the full extent of all that means, maximising and going beyond their potential.

Personal Mission Statement

To use my skills, abilities, gifts and connections to seize every moment, shaping it to the bene?t and ful?lment of the dreams of those around me; to release vision and facilitate the journey towards it for the people whose paths, whether by accident or design, intersect mine.

Strap Line

Live the life you were made for.

Mantra

Exceed expectations.

The Big Picture

Andy White is a Chartered Accountant with a proven track-record in strategic development and planning, effecting business and organisational change, and providing innovative solutions.  With a reputation of being a high-energy, high-impact, ?outside-the-lines? thinker, Andy has worked with corporations, not-for-pro?ts, charities and churches to release vision, effect change and launch strategies for sustainable success. 

His approach is grounded in over 15 years of corporate experience at organisations such as Kroll, Deloitte, Defra, and as a self-employed consultant where he helped small organisations and businesses begin to ful?ll their potential. 

Underpinning all that Andy does is an awareness that life is a journey we share, and none of us has yet reached our destination.  His passion for people, his sensitivity, and his self-awareness have led him to gain a reputation as an effective team-builder, team-player, negotiator, and motivator.

Core Values

• Live with your eyes turned outward. Every person presents an opportunity to make a difference: to serve, to love, or to whom we can simply show kindness; unless our gaze is outward, those opportunities pass by unnoticed.
• Life is about what you give, not what you get. Pro?t, or gain of any sort, whether corporate or personal, whether tangible or intangible, should always be an outcome not a motivation; when we focus on what we can get, and not on what we can give, we miss the point completely.
• Everybody matters. We are all created equal, and are all signi?cant, all have a purpose, and each of us has a story that stretches from the past, to the present and on into eternity.
• Tomorrow is another day.  We live in the present, and tomorrow will always be the product of today; when we get today right, tomorrow is a done-deal.
• Cherish what you have, but hold onto it lightly. Be glad for what you have, but don’t hold onto it so tightly that you are not ready to lay hold of what may yet still to be given to you.

So there you have it, a bit of a glimpse into who I am, rather than what I do.  Have a go at doing a bio yourself – I think you’ll enjoy the experience.

They are cool, there’s no getting away from that, but that hardly separates them from any other Apple product.  That they take functionality in cell phones to a whole new level is hard to dispute.  And there is no denying that for perhaps most people, there would be no need to carry another gadget to achieve mobile multimedia and communication heaven.  But for me they take the whole form over function argument a step too far, and cool just doesn’t cut it far enough to make me even think about parting with cold hard cash.

In reality, it’s a bit of a non-issue: I’m tied into a contract on a T-Mobile Blackberry, and I don’t have a spare hundred plus quid to spend on a new phone, even if I wasn’t contractually crippled.  However, let’s assume I had the cash and I was in the market: what would I do?  Noting, that’s what. For now.  In fact, I wouldn’t do nothing at all – I’d wait; I wouldn’t tie myself to another phone or contract, but instead I’d wait for the iPhone to evolve into what it should be.

Version 2 of iPhone is an improvement for sure – 3G is the functionality version 1 should’ve had – but where are the video capabilities?  Where is the improved storage capacity?  Where is the decent camera?  Where is the choice on contracts and providers?  You see, I’m not especially a fan of O2, and I carry an 80 gig iPod with all but 10GB of its capacity used, I use my phone for pics and I want to be able to take video.

Here’s my take on what Apple did with the iPhone: they developed ground-breaking technology, couldn’t keep a lid on the leaks and had to go to market fast so they got there first.  As a consequence, what they took to market was light on features, but they knew that it was cool enough (and indeed feature-rich enough) for a big-bunch of eager consumers to buy one, thus establishing a presence in the market while they perfected it.  Version 2 needed to be an improvement – and so it was – but couldn’t be so much better than version 1 that Apple alienated all the version 1 early-adopters.  Now here’s my prediction – version 3 will be all that iPhone should be.

So, until iPhone grows up and gets iPod levels of storage, a proper camera and video, as a minimum – essentially until version 3 comes out, which based on Apple’s release schedules, should tie nicely with the end of my current cell phone contract – I can live with my Blackberry. 

When it does grow up, however…….

Missions are tangible and achievable – they focus on what could be, while visions are much less tangible, maybe even intangible, rarely achievable, and always focus on what should be.  Missions flow out of visions, not the other way out; although, it is true to say, sometimes the pursuit of what could be opens our eyes to what should be, and a vision is birthed. 

A vision is what you get when you see through a window to a better place – a better place in business, a better place in life, a better place that is some place other than when you are.  A mission is a stage of the journey you will take towards that better place.  A vision is a fixed point of reference: a compass against which you can navigate your course, always keeping you pointing towards your destination even when you seem to be moving further away.

I know I have talked about this before, but it keeps rearing its head as being an absolutely critical topic.  For example, I have recently been working with an group with a view to a long-term business relationship .  Their ‘vision’ is, in fact, a mission: it is achievable, identifiable, measurable and totally tangible.

In a meeting I asked them what their vision was, and they trotted it out: “To be a top three…”.  “What then?”, I asked.  “What do you mean, ‘what then’?”, they responded.  “Well, what will you do when you achieve that goal?  What then?”.  Blank stares all round.  “Look”, I went on, “I want to know where you are going – what lies beyond the goal that you could achieve in a couple of years.  How do I know that you won’t pack up when you do that?  How do I know you won’t start selling flowers instead of doing what you currently do?  And how do I know that you have aspirations bigger than the here”and now – a focus on continually improving and extending as an organisation, and therefore offering me more, or better?”.  Eventually they got it and said ‘Hmmm, we need to work on that”.  “Yes, you do”, I replied.

You see, the trouble with a mission-based focus is that it is finite – it has a measurable end, and it raises the question ‘what next?’, or ‘where next?’.  It’s a fairly simple distinction, and yet it is one that is sometimes hard to grasp: a vision is always just out of reach, it is that towards which we ceaselessly strive, but at which we are unlikely to ever arrive.  If your vision is a destination easily reached, chances are it’s a mission, and if it’s not, I challenge you to look further, look higher and think bigger.

Missions take us towards our vision, and as we achieve them we gain encouragement to keep pursuing what should be.  Missions break the journey into achievable chunks, they make the overwhelming bearable.  They can sometimes move us in seemingly random directions, and it is only a vision that can bring order or purpose to those apparently chaotic or seemingly aimless legs of our journey.

When is a vision not a vision?  When you have a chance of actually achieving it.