To the moon (but not back, yet): a year in the clouds

For the past six new years I've taken an interest in how much I'm sitting on a plane each year, destroying the planet that my children will inherit. Travel is an increasingly inevitable part of business, particularly in tough economic climates where, if you're not prepared to jump on a plane I fear one might lose any momentum worth talking about. For all the Google Hangouts, Skypes and Facetimes in the world, my team and I at NoTosh have found that online interactions lead only to one thing: people want to cement relationships face-to-face at some point.

2011 was already a headying number of miles to crunch, mostly at the back of the plane, I hasten to add. This year makes last year's 130,000 miles or so look like a stroll in a large park. Heck, by June this year I'd already covered 30,000 miles more than that.

10 times around the world, one trip to the moon (but only a little bit back towards home), and about 10 trees to plant: that's what 2012's 242,226 miles represent.

Why so much travel on planes?

NoTosh has been growing this year. 2011 saw Tom Barrett join the family, this year another great addition in Peter Ford. I've never been a fan of "hiring help", having a company website listing legions of 'staff' who, actually, are part-timers or an occasional extra face when the lone consultant at the top of the pyramid ends up over-stretched. As someone who's hired consultants from that kind of "broad church", I've rarely had the experience I thought I would. As a teacher "being given PD", I've felt the painful lack of continuity between a string of different consultants brought in, lacking any connection between their message, research or impact. With NoTosh, a tight-bound team who very often live out of each other's pockets, people have been able to play off the different personalities of the team. This means that all of us have been traveling more, as more people ask for seconds or thirds on the learning we've been doing with them.

A non-existent Scottish / UK market, and a booming clutch of global clients has led to many more trips through to Scandinavia, the Middle East and Australia. Scottish revenues at NoTosh are tiny - maybe around 5% of our total this year. The UK as a whole contributes a lot less than 50% of our turnover. It might be down to the economic squeeze - although we work in countries with far more squeeze to their purses than Scotland or the rest of the UK - or it might be a degree of tall-poppy-syndrome for which we are famous. It's more likely down to the fact that we've not yet really made an effort to sell anywhere in the world, let alone Scotland. Everything NoTosh has achieved so far has been down to kindly word of mouth, great partners and superb teachers that have put in the hours on interesting, impactful practice. For that, we are grateful. Even if it means that we get a bit clogged up with airplane aircon.

Australia is in itself big reason for a well-worn seat 14F. We've purposefully been looking to Australia since early 2011 as a place that a) has a heritage of great education innovation, b) realises there's always more to learn, and c) shares some of the educational heritage of Scotland. This year has been back-to-back Australia, working with schools throughout Brisbane and Sydney's Catholic Education Departments, as well as with independent schools there. We've also been working on creative projects with political parties and other groups, something we want to expand upon. 

Will we reduce those miles? Yes.

If you don't want to travel somewhere, you live there. 2013 should see fewer of those trips to Oz and back - there was a point earlier in 2012 where I'd done seven return trips in 12 months! Tom Barrett moves in a matter days, with his family, to engage schools and creative groups who want to help build NoTosh - permanently - downunder. I'm grateful to Tom beyond words for the commitment he's made to our team in doing this - it was a case of stars aligning between his and his families wishes, and our opportunity here and now. I'm sure the promise of sunshine and the occasional beach might soften the blow for him and his family.

We're likely to hire again, too. We've spotted some talent that we're interested in, and now need to find those larger clients or groups of schools who, over a year, say, want to begin engaging with us on some deep projects on assessment, design thinking or creativity. We're also sure that there are more schools and groups of schools in the UK with whom we could build as strong a relationship as we have elsewhere.

We're building incredibly exciting UK-based programmes. Peter Ford has been a lead on three significant projects over the past nine months that have involved our whole team. We'll be sharing these in the New Year, along with their global expansion in 2013. For us, it's just great to see more, larger, bigger scale learning programmes taking hold in the UK, in spite of the recession.

There are a few other surprises, too, that my team and I will keep under wraps for the moment. If they're any good, you'll know about them in good time, I guess. All of these, though, are geared up to keeping our landing gear down, firmly planted on solid ground as much as possible. Wish us luck!

Comments

[Oliver Quinlan]

What a great year. Interesting to read your reflections on it, the way you share your work leads to many of us beyond the projects you are directly working on also learning a great deal.

Thanks for sharing!