Last week I signed a contract with the public transportation organization Movia who represents the public bus industry in Copenhagen and Sealand. In July, the Danish Transportation Agency decided to allocate a little less than 10 mio. Danish kroner (about 1.3 mio Euro) to giving the bus drivers a better image in the general public. The project covers training of the bus drivers, better internal communication in the industry and numerous activities and communication that will change the public perception of the bus drivers. Most of the activities will be happening over the next 15 months.

Bus drivers thrive after pilot project
During 2008 and 2009 Stagis developed the strategy as well as the project in details, gathered the parties involved and gave the project the it's name and visual identity. From March to October 2009 we orchestrated the pilot project called 'Chauffører med karaktér' (Bus drivers with character), testing some of the ideas in order to prove the effects of the strategy. As you can imagine, the results were overwhelmingly positive. As mentioned in the casestudy on www.stagis.com and a May blog post, 90 percent of the bus drivers claimed to thrive at work in October of 2009. Six months earlier, only 68 percent agreed. Generally, the bus drivers know that people don't have glorious thoughts about them. In the same survey, only 13 percent of the bus drivers thought that their job had a good image in the public. When the pilot project ended, that had increased to 24 percent. Partly due to the positive media appearances that we spun off. Partly because the passengers had sent hundreds of text messages with their stories about good experiences in the busses. The strategic goal behind that change is simple: If the bus drivers are happy about the work, they will treat their passengers better and hence the perception of the bus ride will change for the better.

So what's next?
There are already several courses going on at 'Movia Akademi' this month and next week I'm meeting with a group of bus drivers who was attending the Academy last year. They created such a strong relationships with each other that they still want to meet and bond now, a year later. I'm really looking forward to seeing them again!

In a couple of weeks we will start to announce more about the specific plans and the ideas will start to materialize. For now, I'm really pleased that the ideas we developed will continue to live and that the bus drivers will continue to make positive changes. For themselves and for all of us in the back of the bus.

Check out four bus drivers 'with character' on the Danish website we created at the end of 2008 on buschauffor.dk. I love all of them but my favourite is Sezgin who was the youngest bus driver in Copenhagen at the time.

Last weekend I had the pleasure to participate in the seminar: Map Marathon, an event that is part of the annual Frieze Art Fair, based in Regents Park, London. The seminar had an impressive line up of scientists, mathematicians, graphic designers and artists all talking about how mapping can be used and unfolded in different directions and for various purposes. Two sessions caught my mind in particular. One was a presentation made by editor of Wired, David Rowan and Hal Bertram. They revealed the technology behind some amazing new technologies for turning dynamic data into useful mappings. For instance the showed us how OpenStreetMap - an open map system generated by people all over the world - helped the rescue workers when the earthquake hit Haiti, and how the timetables of London buses can show the density of traffic in London. And how the air traffic was monitored during the ash cloud incident last spring.

The other was graphic designer and cartographer Joost Grootens. Joost runs a design studio in Amsterdam, specialized in making books – Atlases in particular. It was impressive to hear Joost explain about the history of mapping, and how the graphic reproductions has developed. The concern of detail in color, typography and precise communication of data in his work, has result in beautifully crafted atlases, that is worth a study in information graphics. 

The last few weeks has been the first, in my new position as both a member of the Stagis team and as a master student in London. I had the privilege to be accepted at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design’s MA in Communication Design. The school is located in Clerkenwell and Holborn in the center of London and is a part of University of the Arts London. The course is focused on developing designers who question and develop the communication design scene, work with concept developments and problem solving instead of focusing on particular practices.

And how does being in London match with me still working as a designer at Stagis? During the week I will be in close contact with the colleagues at the office in Copenhagen, and I try to be present at the office as often as possible, in order to work on projects and stay in touch with clients. In the meantime I work from London, with the kind help from Skype and other technology wonders, which makes it possible for us to maintain our work processes and work as we use to!

Of course being both a student and a professional requires a hole lot of time, and the work load will probably be a bit more that I’m used to, but as this an amazing opportunity for me to develop my practical and theoretical design skills, I’m convinced it's worth the work. Central Saint Martins is considered one of the best design universities, and I already had the pleasure to be enriched by interesting lectures and skilled tutors. 
The shaky image above is from one of the lecture hall’s: To thine own self be true – a Shakespeare quote I used to see every day on the wall at Stagis.

Study focus
My major interest and motivation to do a master, is to study the relation between theory and practice related to identity design. At Stagis we always investigate the indicators of authentic organizational identity before we develop identity design. At Central Saint Martins I will focus my studies towards the way we map or survey the identity, and then how the collected data is transformed to a concrete design proposal. The particular process of mapping and translation is in my opinion a very interesting and important phase of the design process, and I’m aiming towards improving myself as a designer and this area in particular.

How do you market an executive master program that excelles by letting the participants shape the program themselves? At Master of Management Development, an executive program for experienced managers at Copenhagen Business School, the managers attending the program decide for themselves what to read, what they want to explore, what the content of their exams are and how they will implement their learning in the day-to-day work in their organizations. Every participant in the program is evaluated on six different parameters, among them are personal leadership, reflexivity and relational abilities. If you are to lead management development processes, you have to be able of developing yourself and to evaluate that process. To make things more difficult the market for executive master programs has become somewhat strained by the financial crisis. Most companies think about the budgets twice before they send their managers off to school.

The authentic strengths of MMD
In 2006 and 2008 Stagis helped the program get more attention in the media and fill up the program with curious leaders who want to develop themselves as well as their organizations. Since our longlasting collaboration with Copenhagen Business School began, some 40-odd articles in the Danish media has passed. We also created a series of podcasts with the participants and professors called 'MMD Refleksion' in order to convey the people and the ideas in the program. This year we are helping the program get the much-deserved attention again. This time we are using the authentic strengths of the management development program by creating an experience that will help some 200 leaders, consultants and change agents see for themselves what the program is about. We are setting up the 'Be the change' conference. Three professors and two executives are the main attractors at a half-day conference on November 9th that will demonstrate the idea about changing your world (being Society, the company or your department) by changing yourself as a leader. The much-needed side-effect is framing the theme and creating an event that will generate several types of communication in the press, newsletters, word-of-mouth etc. The conference is set up with Danish newsmedia Berlingske Tidende on their businessliv.dk platform where you can buy tickets.

Be the change
Working together with my colleagues Christel and Niels, I named the conference 'Be the change' with inspiration from Ghandi's "You must be the change you want to see in the World". In organizations, too, you can't change anything if you're not ready to change your own way of thinking or putting yourself to use in the transformation. During an intense three week period Christel booked professors John Christiansen (head of the MMD program), Jan Molin (founder of the program and CBS dean), Patricia Shaw and executives Jens Moberg (former Microsoft and Better Place) and Michael Christiansen (former Royal Danish Theatre and now head of DR). They all have theoretical or hands-on experience on how to transform yourself in order to change things. Personally, I'm looking forward to hearing Michael Christiansen talk about his experiences at the Danish Royal Theatre where he went from being what he calls 'Napoleon' to 'Cousin Sensitive'.

Stagis is making it happen
We set up the conference at the Danish National Museum where 200 participants will experience a great mix of practical experience and advice and get a sense of the theoretical ideas flowing through the master program. Hopefully they will also partake in networking, getting inspiration from one another and talk about the experience to colleagues, employees and friends. The Stagis team is setting up invites and newsletters, dealing with the location, preparing talks and slideshows, posters, handouts, handling press, running the facebook and google platforms and documenting the event.

Want to be part of the change on November 9th?
If you want to know more or participate, take a look at the Be the change page on the MMD website where you can also sign up. The conference is in Danish except for Patricia Shaws part.

Last month, Rene Redzepi, the celebrated No. 1 chef of restaurant NOMA, was introducing his new book at the Sydney Opera House. I just received the book by mail this morning. It's beautiful and well worth reading. Inspiring story (and diary) and inspiring photos. Out on Politikens Forlag in Denmark and Phaidon elsewhere.

'The crisis makes the trade union look inside'. An article on the website of Danish trade union FTF is concerned with the organizational crisis of their market: the members of the trade and labour unions are fleeing. They interviewed me to get a perspective of possible solutions in regard to maintain existing members and attracting new ones. It seems that the unions are not as attractive as they used to be. There is a sense of a lack of purpose. The financial and economic crisis may have helped a bit as people felt insecure about jobs, economy and day-to-day life. But when things get better financially what will the unions bring about that really inspires people to join and participate? What is the movement about?

The unions - like all organizations facing a crisis - will have to look inward to find their authentic strengths and they will have to make a strategic selection as to which beliefs and competencies they will pursue and which will have to be left behind.

Article in Danish - read it on the FTF website.

We have been working on the book cover for 'The Authentic Company', coming out in 2011 in Danish and in 2012 internationally. Here is a shot from Annes screen I took the other day. The hardcover has a black and white pattern illustrating boxes. At the center of the front page you'll see boxes within boxes - because there are layers underneath the surface of the company that you have to explore in order to find the authenticity of the company. I've just finished chapter 14 which means I'm working on the last four chapters of the manuscript while the editor at Gyldendal is outlining words with red marker in the first 13 chapters...

If you like patterns, check out the Patternity blog "seeing pattern everywhere" on www.patternity.co.uk