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“Why I’m deleting Stuart Lancaster’s picture”.

Or “Purpose and Values under Fire”

I got my first rugby ball for my 2nd birthday, and

have been in love with the game ever since.

Hence, I was delighted when my son won a

prize for us to join the England team for a day’s

training at Pennyhill Park in the spring of 2012.

These were heady days for England rugby, full

of promise as a new coach swept in with a fresh

start and new caps galore for youthful players

to deliver attack and enterprise.

Stuart was, and still is, a thoroughly decent man: honest, energetic, seemingly full of purpose about

winning through positive rugby. 2 days later, England demolished Ireland 30-9. Sadly, 3 years on, he

was sacked after a World Cup campaign that failed to deliver on this promise. Why? How?

Simply put, England Rugby lost its sense of purpose and strayed from those values.

A discordant coaching Leadership team chopped, changed and bickered about selection, leaving out

great players who were game-changers because they were ‘difficult’. They ended up trying to avoid

losing, rather than selecting to win, and the Players seemed unsure whether to react to what

unfolded on the field, or to go with a partially-rehearsed set of moves. Resultant muddle and

confusion was played out in front of millions….. they went into their shells and lost.

Coaches of international and other high-profile teams talk of the stress of the job.

Whilst I agree that there is obvious & intense media & public scrutiny, I run a conference production

company and in a corporate environment, this is also subject to very public scrutiny if anything

should go wrong. We have calmly and successfully dealt with and overcome a bomb scare at the

Royal Albert Hall, a company speaker collapsing on his way to the lectern, a complete power failure

during an event, a guest speaker who wandered off into the hotel and got lost 2 mins before they

were due onstage, a high-profile cabaret act who pulled out due to sickness 24hrs before the Gala

Awards, and many others….

However, whilst these are examples of the pressure to perform which come with the job of either a

sports team coach or a successful conference production, it isn’t stress, in my view.

Stress is not a penalty shoot-out.

Stress is carrying out your day-to-day work whilst actually being under fire.

Stress is holding firm to your values when you and everything around you is in mortal danger – your

family, your work colleagues, and your countrymen.

And stress is carrying on…… when it would be so much easier to stop.

So I am replacing my profile photo of Stuart Lancaster and I with one of Khaled El Mufti. Khaled is

Libyan, a visionary, and someone who recognises his purpose, and sticks to his values.

In 2009 I first met Khaled in the cocktail bar of the Hilton Park Lane. This 007-esque meeting

introduced me to Khaled’s vision of creating a knowledge economy for Libya to lead it out of its

mediaeval society and economic reliance on fossil fuels. Together with a fellow Masters graduate of

Royal Holloway College and long-standing client of ours from his days with Mars and Motorola, John

MacDonald, Khaled was setting up a virtual research facility: Tatweer Research.

(www.tatweerresearch.org) .

Throughout the turmoil of the overthrow of Ghaddafi’s regime, Khaled toiled to keep this dream

alive. We supported it through design of logos, communications materials, websites, Prezi

presentations and so on. The vision gained a boost after the overthrow with proposals for thousands

of Libyan graduates, in cohorts, to gain ‘hot-house’ MBAs at UK and American Universities. The first

group was to have had a staging-post week in Malta to help cope with a complete paradigm shift

from civil war in a Muslim country to University life in Cambridge UK or Massachusetts USA, with

big-budget production values and detailed delegate management – all of which Powerhouse put in

place, ready to press the ‘go’ button. Sadly, the lack of any experience of decision-making in the

Libyan national executive post-overthrow led to delays and meant that this opportunity to show

progress was lost.

This lost opportunity was key: before the overthrow, Libyans had a single, homogenous view of what

was ‘bad’. Afterwards, without even baby step examples of what a shared view of ‘good’ could be

like, dozens of versions of ‘good’ developed, with factions grabbing what they could.

Undeterred, Khaled set up a 4-day think-tank to help devise and develop a new FreeZone & Elmreisa

Tech City outside Benghazi, again to kick-start the knowledge economy and benefit Libyans. This was

at Judge Business School, Cambridge University (https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk) which I helped

facilitate, attended by experts in clusters and Tech City Planners & development, and UK Govt. & US

State Department representatives. Again, despite Powerhouse producing 3D video graphics, logo

design and Prezis for Elmreisa Tech City to support Khaled’s tireless work promoting the project

development, the executive in Libya has yet to make progress on this project.

In the meanwhile, conflict flared across the country, but Khaled was undeterred.

23 young Libyans from Tatweer Research came to The Judge Business School in early 2014, a project

supported by Powerhouse, to go through a Management Sciences course specifically designed for

these young men and women to return to Libya as role models.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n27vnlv7).

Recently, a “Learning for Libya” event was kindly hosted by Hogan Lovells at their London

headquarters. (www.hoganlovells.com). It featured guest speakers from Tatweer Research, the

Libyan Investment Authority, the Libyan British Business Council, and was co-sponsored by Tamweel

Capital.

Learning for Libya attracted an audience of

multinational businesses and Libyan stakeholders, as well as the UK Government, all of whom take

an active interest in supporting the redevelopment, rebuilding and transition of the country. I had

the honour of speaking from the floor, asking the audience to consider how this fine example of

Khaled’s vision starting to take shape could flourish further with more graduates in an age of acute

nervousness of large numbers of young people crossing international borders. A distance-learning

project was our proposal for the future.

Whilst today may not be the time for Libya, ‘Think Tomorrow’ surely is...

So, Stuart Lancaster, we wish you well; as we do for Eddie Jones who succeeds you.

But please, stick to your values, even under pressure.

These young Libyans will, eventually, spread the word and action that the future for Libya is the

same as the purpose, vision and values which Khaled El Mufti shared with me all of those years ago

in a London cocktail bar…..

Believe in the youth, give them training, help them to share your vision and entrust them with

responsibility… they will respond, and hopefully, prevail.

And stick to your values.

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.

Being willing is not enough; we must do." -Leonardo da Vinci