Jack Butler's Learning Journey

Jack is taking a sabbatical, to do some learning and get some new perspectives.  See below to find out more about his learning journey and for details of his blog.

Email to FF Family and Friends

[August 9th 2011]

Dear all,

Firstly, a big thanks to those of you who saw me off on Thursday night and Sunday night – brilliant send off!

Having not really done it before, I am not sure how much I will or won’t be blogging – but where I will be blogging is:

www.iamjackbutler.blogspot.com

This is the email that I will be checking most often, albeit only periodically.

If you want to catch a glimpse of the video montage the guys put together for Sunday’s pre-going away session, see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkiAHGdyw9U

Connect soon,

Jack

Email to FF Family and Friends

[Wednesday August 3rd 2011]

Dear FF family and friends,

I hope your summer has started well!

It’s kicked off fantastically well at FF with new and old coaches and tutors combining well to bring off some excellent programmes.  We had a bumper series of programmes in the last weeks with Westminster Summer School, Colchester County Summer School (x2!), McKinsey Leadership Programme, Wembley HE Experience and Aldgate and All Hallows summer school all going brilliantly.  It was a weary but jubilant set of teams which returned from various parts of the country to the Fun Factory Friday before last for a well-deserved BBQ and drinks.

I am writing to let you know that after 6 years and much reflection (and having been both excited and challenged), it feels like it’s time for me to take a sabbatical, do some learning and get some new perspectives.  For a while I have been wanting to engage more directly and creatively with what else is out there in the personal development space.  I have some emerging areas of interest which it feels right to take some time to explore.  These include:

• Integral Coaching – see New Ventures West link below
• Integral Theory more generally (What is Integral?  See here – http://www.integralinstitute.org)
• Adult developmental levels (e.g. the work of Harvard Professor Robert Kegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan)
• Approaches to raising consciousness, both individually and culturally

As such, in two weeks’ time I am due to be heading to Western Canada and West Coast USA for a few months for a sort of pilgrimage or learning journey, involving:

• Inquiry
• Interviews and seeing projects
• Meetings and networking
• Seeing a few family and friends en route
• Getting stuck in and helping people with stuff they are up to, and
• Retreat 

As a flavour, current people/initiatives I am looking to connect with/visit include:  James Flaherty and New Ventures West (www.newventureswest.com), the biggest provider of ‘integral’ coaching;  David Lesser and Executive Confidant (www.executiveconfidant.com); the integral community in Boulder, Colorado (where Ken Wilber is based including the Integral Institute (http://www.integralinstitute.org/?q=node/1) and Steve McIntosh of Now and Zen (get one of his alarm natural chime clocks if you haven’t yet!); Saniel Bonder and the Waking Down approach;  the Ojai community (http://www.ojaifoundation.org/);  Microsoft in Seattle;  Silicon Valley;  the human potential institute at Esalen (http://www.esalen.org/); Big Sur, Santa Cruz, Marin County, San Francisco, San Diego, Art of Living, the Enneagram guys (www.enneagraminstitute.com), the Ridhwan School (http://www.ridhwan.org/) and more as it unfolds…

Jon and the team have been leading the day-to-day operations for the past four months and doing a cracking job, and with our successful Spring recruitment drive and the fab people who came through it, we are well placed to deliver strongly on all our summer and anticipated Autumn schedule.  Jon will become Managing Director, and I will step into a Chairman role.  We are anticipating FF expanding into some new areas and products in the foreseeable future…so watch this space!  Very exciting strategy day today!

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the core FF team for being legends generally, for their hard work so far this year and for also being supportive of my plans; I especially want to acknowledge Jon, whose been a star and workhorse during the past four years and a partner-in-crime to be proud of, and famous for such expressions as ‘crack on’ and ‘yes’ (when given two options to choose from) J. Big shout out to the whole FF team for creating such energy and enthusiasm around our 2011 deliveries(during strategy meeting today my highlight of this year at FF has been meeting the new coach cohort – what an incredible bunch!) and our clients whom we love working with, especially our long-standing partnerships with Westminster School, Highgate School, Colchester County High School for Girls, Changemakers, SIFE and Wellington College. I would equally like to acknowledge the support of our advisors, in particular recently Simon Barter, Roger Flaxman and Anthony Barling, whose support has been really valuable.  Over the years our advisory board of Roddy Campbell, Tania Watson, Sharon Bamford, Richard Tyrie, Anthony Millard and Ian Joseph have been amazing supporters, challengers and champions of what FF have done and I would like to acknowledge them with big heartfelt thanks for being there on many a phone call, meeting or catch up to check in on the good ship FF.  To you all, massive gratitude.  

On another note, if you have ideas of good people/organisations to connect with on the West Coast – or anything in line with the above – do please let me know! 

Although I am hoping to minimise the time I spend on email while I am away so that I can explore as freely as possible, I will be intending to keep a blog of some of what I am encountering.  I shall write in due course to let you know in case you would like to subscribe.

All good thoughts,

Jack