The lighter side

A short relocation poem about tannins
by T Gaskin

Damian, based in South for sins,
Located now in St ‘Albins’.
He's finding 'tea' the major source
of feeling homesick for the North;
The water yields a heavy slick,
He serves the tea in wedges, thick.

Tetley, Typhoo, Yorkshire Gold,
(He's not very posh if truth be told)
PG, Clipper, 99 brand,
(that's 'Co-op', which the South have banned)
They all just taste of muddy water,
The tea 'don't taste like what it oughta'.
And even cups in cafés, dear,
Where you would hope the water's clear,
They put the milk in on the bag,
with water cool and high price tag.
Despite a search Home County-wide,
He's just not being satisfied.

At night, with bag and mug he roams,
and pines for brews of Northern homes.
So cheer him up, for goodness sake,
Pop in for slice of tea and cake.

Archive
Testimonials

"I was looking for your expertise in the theatre and then what emerged was a clear understanding about learning. This led to a much more collaborative partnership blending The Forum Partnership's expertise on theatre with our expertise on coaching."

David Love

Principal, Leadership & Management Development, Office for Public Management

"I am absolutely certain that the financial disbenefits of getting it wrong would have more than covered the costs of the money that we paid The Forum Partnership."

Andy Martin

Managing Partner, Strutt & Parker

"The financial value? That's hard to put a figure to. The aggressive client work, that was definitely a case of saving people leaving."

Paul Stubbs

Head of Learning & Development, Davis Langdon

"In the long term (the course was two years ago) the person I had my conversation with I am now far more comfortable and confident with approaching on difficult issues."

Delegate

Legal Sector

"The difference is that there is no place to hide with this."

Catherine Boddington

Head of Learning & Development, Addleshaw Goddard

"There was a real understanding of our culture and organisation."

Ray O'Connor

Learning & Development Advisor, Addleshaw Goddard

"It has helped me build up my reputation, as it were, within the department and the wider firm."

Commissioning Client

Legal Sector

"You make my life easier: I will give you the material, I will have one meeting with you in September and then everyone will turn up when they need to turn up, they will do what they need to do and we get great reviews. That is, frankly, what I'm looking for at the end of the day."

Matthew Bruce

Senior Associate, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

Forum Partnership Newsletter - JulyArchive

Website

The website is softly launched! Just go to www.theforumpartnership.com to have a look. Please send your feedback. We will have a much bigger launch event in September so watch this space.

OPM Away Day

Recently we ran a 20th Anniversary Retreat for our Partner OPM and all 86 of its staff. In introducing the entire organisation to the Hero's Journey we also managed to reduce the film Gladiator to 15 minutes. Post event comments include, "I thought the Hero's Journey was a masterful centrepiece to the day…Brilliant" (The Forum Partnership are) 'Great to work with – professional and personable."

"Working with The Forum Partnership on the 2009 Annual Retreat was a brilliant experience. They clearly understood OPM's needs and our objectives for the day and, therefore, were invaluable in supporting our thinking about what the event should be like and creating the agenda."

For more on this please see Beth Anderson our client of the month for July.

The Lighter Side

Keeping in touch with poetry seems to have struck a chord with many recipients responding in kind. Thank you! We look forward to creating the coffee table book for Christmas.

Recent New Projects

We solved a current client's training needs with an innovative use of video which has lead to big savings for them over a 6 month project.

We worked with the top teams of two new clients, a university and a county council on their leadership programmes.

National Learning Week at Work

We were delighted to be invited to take part in National Learning Week at Work and delivered five ex-gratia workshops on Creative Thinking, The Thinking Environment and Creating A Presence for Addleshaw Goddard. Here are some of the comments:

The Thinking Environment - Extremely good session - thought provoking and useful techniques

Presence-"Damian and Lindsey were fantastic. Would attend any workshops with them."

Creative Thinking - Was excellent. Well presented and really broke out of the normal training mould.

Twitter

We keep updating our Twitter on a (almost) daily basis to keep followers informed of the thrills and spills of life at The Forum Partnership. Please click on the link on our home page to follow.

And finally - Innovation

Innovation is key and we have had some simply amazing ideas for new services, which are greener, cheaper and more immediate than anything we have done before. We will be launching by the end of the summer. Watch this space.

Even More Qualified to Think

We are delighted to announce that Steph has finished the final part of her training and is now a fully qualified Thinking Environment Coach and Consultant.

This is a really useful approach for anyone wanting to create a Thinking Environment at work to support staff and colleagues to do their own best thinking. It has applications to leadership, managing meetings, coaching and mentoring. We’ve adopted Thinking Environment tools and structures in the day to day management of our company and have found it invaluable. Watch out next month for a full article about the Thinking Environment.