Richard Maun

Author: moderncareers

  • Crow Does… Playing

    Crow says: 'Oi! Stop working and go play!'
    Crow says: 'Oi! Stop working and go play!'

    Hello, I’m Crow and sometimes I turn up at Richard’s workshops, which is fun for me and gets some interesting reactions from people. I like to help humans develop their presentation skills, or challenge some of their thinking styles and if I squawk, well that’s just me being friendly, as I’m a happy sort of bird. Richard is taking a break for three weeks and has asked me to stand in and say something interesting. He claims that he’s in the garden ‘thinking great thoughts’, but personally I think he’s just asleep. Oh well, anyway, here goes my blog…

    When did you last have some crowtime? You know, when you skipped off work and took an hour in the bird bath to fluff up your feathers and get rid of all the grit. Well, I ‘spose that as you’re a human you don’t need to keep your feathers in good shape do you? I mean it’s not like you can fly or anything is it?

    But I was thinking about what to write this week and then I thought – no – I will go and play for a while. So I’ve sneaked Richard’s copy of ‘The Battle of Britain’ into the dvd player and have decided to avoid any work and will just stop and play today. And I’ve bet the stupid pigeon who lives on the roof that the British will win again! Caw! Pigeons are so ignorant.

    So before I go off to watch the film and then collect my winnings I have a question for you:

    What will you do to take care of your feathers this week?

    How was that? I think I’m getting the hang of this, although my beak can’t take much more pounding on the keyboard for now. Next week I might write about ‘pigeons and why they’re so dumb they sleep in the road’, but then again I might not.

  • Crow Does… Thinking Styles

    Crow says 'Hello to you'...he's a friendly sort of bird...
    Crow says: 'Hello – I'm a bird!'

    Hello, I’m Crow and sometimes I turn up at Richard’s workshops, which is fun for me and gets some interesting reactions from people. I like to help humans develop their presentation skills, or challenge some of their thinking styles and if I squawk, well that’s just me being friendly, as I’m a happy sort of bird. Richard is taking a break for three weeks and has asked me to stand in and say something interesting. He claims that he’s in the garden ‘thinking great thoughts’, but personally I think he’s just asleep. Oh well, anyway, here goes my blog…

    As a clever bird I like to think that I can do thinking and there’s three thinking styles I’ve learned to think about:

    1) Canyon Thinking. This happens when another crow (not me obviously) thinks about every little aspect of a problem and spends so much time on the details they lose sight of the problem! You could say that, like a narrow canyon, their thinking is one inch wide and one mile deep! Ha ha! (What’s an inch by the way? Crows never got the hand of basic measurement systems).

    2) Coyote Thinking. Some crows rush about doing the first thing that comes into their heads, without thinking through the consequences. A bit like Wile E. Coyote. Honestly, if you want something doing properly, get a crow to sort it, but not one of those silly impetuous ones.

    3) Broad Thinking. Ah, I’m good at this. This is when I take time to think through and round and over a problem. Sometimes I sketch out the issues with my beak, talk to other crows and generally eye up the problem from all sides. Richard says he does this too, but you know, I’m not always convinced he does. But then he is human! Not everyone is as good as crows!

    How was that? Hope you liked it. More Crow stuff next week. I might do a bit about ‘why pigeons are so stupid’. I could go on for hours….but do you know how hard it is to type with a beak?