NPD

I’ve finally got round to watching ‘Dark Woods’, the latest from Walter Presents. It’s got everything I like in a TV drama, it’s well written, full of great characters, and dark. I love watching crime thrillers in a foreign language. Somehow it adds another level of intrigue to the plot. Anyway, I’m a few weeks behind and so no spoilers.

During the first episode we learn that two of the protagonists, the young Anne Bach and the seasoned Thomas Bethge, have had a student/teacher relationship. She comments that he had marked some initials on one of her exam papers and until then she had not realised what they meant. I’d have to go back and check, but they were something along the lines of NPD, numquam prohibere discendi, or never stop learning.

Now this may be a tenuous link to the subject that I wanted to talk about (it’s my blog so I decide what goes in) yet it shows that someone like myself, at the end of his career, still has plenty to learn. Thea and I have been running a series of Digital Peer Network sessions. The idea is that, each week, two topics are introduced by different members of the group. They are topics that they are interested in and have been exercising their business minds. 

The rest of the group, through questioning and experience, talks through the issue. The idea is not to solve people’s problems but rather to give them deeper insight into what is troubling them. Only you can truly solve your own problems.

Thea and my role has been to facilitate, to make sure that the conversation rolls along, it stays reasonably close to the agreed  subject and that everyone gets a chance to speak. What I hadn’t expected however, was that I would learn so much. There have been topics such as ‘scaling sales’ which I thought I was reasonably well versed in but have found a whole new world out there. Other subjects, including a discussion around OKRs (objectives and key results), have been completely new to me.

Each discussion reveals something new which has made the whole thing worthwhile. Numquam prohibere discendi, indeed!