For so many leaders, Common Purpose provides an opportunity to see the world through other people’s eyes so it’s great that the Common Purpose 360 Day should challenge people to do something along these lines. Common Purpose extends to every leader an invitation to do one thing, big or small, to challenge the way they see the world.

You don’t have to conquer Everest. There are various ways you can challenge yourself to develop a different perspective.

• Visit a part of your city you’ve never seen,
• Subscribe to receive a blog from a writer you’re unfamiliar with,
• Use a different mode of transport for the day to get around,
• Watch a documentary on a topic you’ve no knowledge on,
• Buy your fruit and vegetables somewhere completely different,
• Enrol in a language course;
• Or just invite your neighbours to your house for afternoon tea!

What will you be doing?

One of the things we encourage our 30,000 alumni to do is try and contact other alumni that they don’t know. This year, I hope our alumni will do something a bit more international. Last year there was some wonderful feedback from people who got in touch with alumni in other parts of their cities or from sectors of work different from their own – but seldom in other countries.

Now that Common Purpose operates in so many countries the opportunity to simply email a someone on the other side of the world is incredible.

You can chat to someone who runs an airport in Bangalore, or a community project in a Johannesberg township, or a bank in Dublin, or a hospital in Leipzig, or a parent teachers association in Birmingham, or a town hall in Glasgow, or a policeman in Hong Kong (ok so the first course does not start till November, but soon…!), or a retailer in Budapest.

What an incredible source of knowledge, generosity and insight.

Having said this, I am not going to contact anyone. I am going to try a day of fasting. For some reason Ramadan seemed to go on for ever this year in the UK for my friends who were doing it. They looked gaunt and tired. It must require huge self control, particularly in a country where others continue to eat unaware. Maybe I’ll understand it better if I fast for one day. A small effort compared to their stretch.

Find out more about the 360 Day and get involved at www.commonpurpose360.org

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12 October 2010

So the impact on me? Very simple. For half a day I wondered what people are fussing about. Not eating is easy. Then I started getting bad tempered (no, not bad tempered but short tempered). I did start to obsess about the sun and how slowly it moves. I cannot imagine how you fast if sundown is at 10pm and not 7.30pm.
Did I learn anything? I think I was admiring of people who fast for Ramadan before so no change there, but now I think I am more understanding of their occasional (only very occasional!) short temperedness.

- Julia Middleton.

Where do you turn for new insights, or to throw yourself into the unfamiliar? Do you have to take a year out and travel the globe? Or should you simply go out in your own street and see it through another person’s eyes?

I explained the Common Purpose 360 Day (an invitation from Common Purpose to do exactly that, and challenge the way you see the world), to my daughter last week. She started giggling. She said that I had pestered her all her life to “never judge anyone until you had walked a mile in their shoes”. She said that she had discovered the perfect response to my lecturing…you should do it, because then by the time the person you are judging has figured out what you are up to, you are a mile away and have their shoes! I fear that I am not a serious parent.

Her giggling came the day before she threw me, unplanned, way out into unfamiliar territory, because she fell and fractured her skull. It has been a grim and frightening week and her recovery sounds like it will be lengthy. I have spent hours and hours in different levels of serious casualty wards – seriously out of the familiar and challenging the way that I see the world.

So what have I learnt, or re-learnt?

• How impatient I am and how much stress that puts on people around me
• How easily I slide into the “group speak” of being horrible about the British NHS. At every level it has been  top notch for us, all week. I must stop adding my voice to the endlessly critical naysayers and share my pride at how impressive they were.
• As I walked down one corridor (for the four hundred and fiftieth time), I looked again at the notice board with the thank you notes pinned to it. I have to get better at taking the time to write letters of praise and thanks.
• How lovely it is watching a team do what they really love…and doing it really, really well. That’s what the emergency room was. It took me some time watching them to spot who the leader was (in fact I am not even sure I know now). I suspect it was the person (who looked least like the leader) who came and put in another drip when all the others had failed. She (or he maybe if it wasn’t her) was invisible, but you could feel her everywhere. 

Next year, I want more control over my 360 Day experience.

So what will you be doing?