Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Like many people I know, I keep all my notes in a single notebook. I prefer a hardback A4 book, lots of space to write/draw and pretty robust.
I started a new book (left-most black) the day I started Totem. Almost exactly 12 months to the day I filled it completely. So with a new year comes a new book.
I always start each day by writing the date and where I am. Places I have worked this year include Cherhill (the office), Cheltenham, Llanberis, Forest of Dean, Southwick, Brixham, Duchy College, Bradford-upon-Avon and Transylvania.
The first book above was from when I was at Marlborough College and contains 18 months worth of notes and the second, held together with masking tape, from Boulder Adventures amazingly contains nearly 5 years of notes.
I’m looking forward to filling my new one.
Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
At Totem we believe that outdoor training is a tool, not
an end in its own right.
A carpenter might sometimes reach for a chisel while making a chair, but it’s not the only tool he uses. In the same way, for trainers and training managers, only sometimes the outdoors is the right tool for the job.
We work with training organisations to deliver their learning aims, or parts of them, using the outdoors as the vehicle. We are proud to be a small cog in a larger training machine.
Unlike traditional adventure education, with us it’s not always climbing vertiginous mountains and paddling raging rivers. We frequently make use of the near-doors, that natural area just beyond the classroom where lessons can still be learnt but it’s still pretty comfortable, and a cup of tea isn’t far away. Adventure is, after all, a state of mind.
Our trainers use a mix of taught theory and ‘learning by doing’ (experiential) challenges. This allows the academic learning to be reinforced by practical examples of working with others under exciting conditions.
Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
After our last Anything Can Happen course we asked Mark, one of the participants, to write about his experience on the course. Anything Could Happen is such an unusual course with such a different methodology that it can be difficult for people to see what it’s all about. We hoped that by getting one of the participants to tell their story, it might help others to see what they might get out of it.
He did a fantastic job of describing his experiences, which we’ve presented below. There is also a PDF available for download if you want to print it out and give it to someone who would be interested.
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Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
We don’t change organisations, we change people. People change organisations.
Nobody knows your organisation like you do. You know all its quirks and what works for you. All of your staff for a start. They all bring something to your team and those somethings combine to produce your success.
But just imagine for one second that each person brought a little bit more. A small change in their behaviour that leads to a small improvement in their output. Now imagine all of those small improvements adding up and you can easily imagine the change to your organisation.
Now imagine, if each of those small changes in their behaviour inspired someone else to change their behaviour. It’s a bit like dominoes and the change to your organisation increases rapidly.
At Totem we help people make those changes. By utilising a combination of outdoor challenge supported by behavioural theory we run programmes that are innovative and adventurous. Oh, and fun, because if people aren’t happy, they aren’t learning.
