Monthly Archives: June 2014

Olympic gold medallist shares the secrets of his success at Birkbeck’s Business Week

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This post was contributed by Guy Collender, Communications Manager, Birkbeck’s Department of External Relations.

Adrian Moorhouse MBE, Olympic gold medallist, speaking at Birkbeck's Business Week

Adrian Moorhouse MBE, Olympic gold medallist, speaking at Birkbeck’s Business Week

The phenomenal swimming achievements of Adrian Moorhouse MBE speak for themselves: world number one from 1986 to 1992 for 100m breaststroke, Olympic gold medal winner in 1988, and serial breaker of world records. He has also been incredibly successful in business. The management consultancy he co-founded, called Lane4, boasts 80 staff, works in 30 countries and has been recognised repeatedly by The Sunday Times as one of the best 100 small companies to work for. How did he manage to transfer his success from the pool to the boardroom? That intriguing question was the subject of the Alec Rodger Memorial Lecture, entitled What can business learn from sport?, which Moorhouse delivered on 24 June during Birkbeck’s Business Week.

Moorhouse emphasised the importance of applying sporting practices and insights from organisational psychology to create conditions for success. He explained how this was the philosophy of the University of California, where he trained after winning a sports scholarship at age 18. Often referring to the success of Team GB at the 2012 Olympics, he described how the athletes were assisted throughout in a way that is rarely the case for businesses. This approach helped Team GB to third position in the medal table. He said it is necessary to identify “critical performance moments” and then give people what they need when they need it. He also stressed practising under pressure, learning from failure and setting goals as part of talent development.

Moorhouse continued by focusing on goals, saying: “Sport motivates people well with goals. People [in business] don’t work hard enough on meaning.” He employed a goal framework to show how to divide the ultimate goal into manageable stepping stones en route to the overall prize, and how he had to meet a mind-boggling 400 key performance indicators on his way to winning gold in Seoul during his four-year Olympic campaign.

Building mutual trust within teams was highlighted as an essential component of success. He explained how leaders have to believe in people and work together on goals, and how individuals need to be “team-fit”.  He said: “My goal is to create an environment where people can be brilliant. My job is to release their talent.”

Aside from the role of the team, Moorhouse did refer to the personal resilience, self-esteem, self-belief, discipline and rigour required to succeed. He shared a headline from The Daily Telegraph, which declared “Moorhouse is a failure”, after he came fourth in the 1984 100m breaststroke final. At the next Olympics he was to prove the journalist wrong when he won gold.

Moorhouse did explain that not all sporting skills and approaches can be transferred to the world of business, but it is clear that his sporting background and “entrepreneurial nature” are enabling him to succeed.

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Revealing the horrors of state violence at Law on Trial

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This post was contributed by Guy Collender, Communications Manager in Birkbeck’s Department of External Relations.

The severity and frequency of incidents of state violence, including deaths in police custody and the provocation of protestors by the authorities, are disturbing. These excesses need to be exposed and warrant discussion, and that is just what happened as part of this year’s series of Law on Trial lectures about scientific evidence. The graphic and shocking session, entitled ‘State violence under the microscope’, was held at Birkbeck on Thursday 19 June.

Dr Nadine El-Enany, Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck’s School of Law, began by charting the historical roots of state violence and the justifications used for it. She referred to the Peterloo massacre of 1819, when 11 people were killed and more than 500 were injured following a cavalry charge to break up a 60,000-strong meeting in Manchester about political reform (suffrage for all men). El-Enany explained how the doctrine of unlawful assembly developed in three trials following the massacre, how large crowds were assumed to be treacherous, and how public order offences, rather than high treason, came to be used to prosecute protestors.

She described how this assumption that crowds are an “inherent danger” continues today, and how this perception underpins the law as the state tries to depoliticise protest and maintain the status quo.

Referring to the protests in 2010 against rising tuition fees, El-Enany spoke about how the police practice of kettling – confining protestors to a limited area during a protest – proves counter-productive as it can lead to violence.  She said: “Heavy-handed policing has been shown to increase, rather than decrease, disorder.”

Dr Chris Cocking, from the University of Brighton, spoke about psychological theories of crowd behaviour and reiterated how police tactics can backfire. Aggressive actions, such as charges and kettling, treat the crowd as one group, and provoke the crowd to respond as one group. He said: “Indiscriminate public order tactics unite previously disparate crowds into opposing police action and create a self-fulfilling prophesy of escalating conflict.” Cocking described how disorder occurs, not because of violent intent, but because of a clash of legitimacy between two groups, namely the police and the crowd.

Harmit Athwal, of the Institute of Race Relations, spoke about research underway to investigate the deaths of 400 Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people in police custody, prison and immigration detention. She referred to the importance of scientific evidence and independent post-mortems during inquests to challenge the official version of events and the initial views of pathologists in controversial cases. Athwal said: “Scientific evidence is important as it offers an alternative narrative to blaming the victim.”

Dr des Eddie Bruce Jones, Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck’s School of Law, continued by highlighting BME deaths in police custody in Germany, where there is no system of inquests. He focused on the horrific case of Oury Jalloh – a Sierra Leonean asylum seeker who burnt to death in a police cell in Dessau in 2005 while he was shackled to a mattress. No forensic fire examination was conducted, the right questions about how the fire started were not asked, and the lack of an inquest meant that there was no forum to discuss how the death occurred.

The shocking examples and frank exposition of state violence presented by the speakers generated many questions, highlighting once again the School of Law’s interest in social justice and debate.

Listen to the audio recordings of the speakers at the event.

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How much money do you need to be happy at work?

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This post was contributed by Natalie Nezhati.

Footballers like Suarez may earn over £100,000 a week but studies show this might not be enough to make a person happy.

Footballer Ashley Cole was famously mortified at Arsenal’s offer of a £55,000 weekly salary. Demanding no less than £60,000, Cole’s angry response made for some horrified headlines. But as comically obnoxious and out of touch his reaction might seem, it makes perfect sense from an economic point of view.

Income is a relative value explained lecturer David Tross of Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies, at a public talk at Birkbeck’s Pop-Up University in Leytonstone Library last week. It is determined by those we spend most time with: our peers, colleagues, family. Associating with obscenely wealthy sportsmen and frequenting the most exclusive nightclubs means that Cole’s point of reference will differ from yours or mine. Just as Warren Buffett’s will differ from that of the unfortunate toilet attendant who found herself on the wrong side of Cheryl that night.

Research finds we’re happiest when earning an equivalent or superior income to others within our peer group. Better then to be a top earner in an unexceptionally paid job than a millionaire amongst billionaires. Though if you want to put a figure on happiness, many agree that £50,000 is about the sum to aim for. That’s annual salary before tax, in case you were wondering.

At this figure, you can feel secure that your basic meets will be met with a little leftover to cover the odd trip to somewhere sunny. Earning above this amount won’t make you very much happier as the law of diminishing returns kicks in. So if you’re already earning £50,000 you now have permission from science to unplug your Blackberry next weekend and take that extra half hour at lunch, secure in the knowledge that any future payrise will make little difference to your overall happiness quotient.

For those of us yet to reach the all-important 50k, there’s still (scientific) reason to be cheerful. According to the ‘hedonic treadmill’ theory, additional pay won’t affect happiness levels too much because after a short-lived kick from the extra cash, you’ll simply adjust to the new level of income and return to your baseline level of happiness. So unless you’re living in real poverty that much sought after payrise shouldn’t make too much difference.

The trouble is we’re all shockingly deluded about what will make us happy. Research finds we’re consistently poor at ‘affective forecasting’ or predicting our future emotional state. As a consequence, we’re likely to overestimate the positive effect that a payrise will have on our overall wellbeing.

Rather than chasing the cash, David Tross suggests taking a less superficial approach and choosing meaningful work that matches your values. Life’s too short to be spent as a frustrated florist working as a tax advisor. Focus instead on what you enjoy and use your wages to buy experiences rather than things because studies prove that this makes people happier.

The message for Suarez and co. is clear: fewer Ferraris and more visits home to mum. Failing this, consider a move to Denmark or Columbia where people are comparatively very happy indeed. If this doesn’t appeal, just relax and wait it out. Statistically, people aged between 65 and 74 are the happiest of us all.

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Bloomsbury Humanitarian Debates

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This post was contributed by Anna Marry, Communications Manager, LIDC. It originally appeared on the LIDC blog.

Inter-collegiate, interdisciplinary events are always a pleasure to go to, and not only because of LIDC’s focus on interdisciplinary research in international development working with five Bloomsbury Colleges. That particular approach often unearths issues that would not have been unearthed otherwise, and bringing together academics with the NGO community and policy-makers makes such events even more stimulating.

The Bloomsbury Humanitarian Debate in June was no different. Organised for the fifth time by two LIDC member colleges: Birkbeck and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and their partner Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), this series of events explores various issues in the humanitarian sector using a debate format with academic and non-academic experts.

The June event was on resilience in the humanitarian sector. The panel included speakers from MSF, Humanitarian Outcomes, University of Bristol and University of Cambridge. The audience was mostly composed of humanitarian experts themselves, including policy-makers and donors.

Sandrine Tiller from MSF argued that focusing on resilience undermines necessary short-term responses to humanitarian crises. She pointed out that merely surviving is not the same as coping – we often think that people in crisis, for example in Somalia, are resilient, while in fact they are just staying alive.

Paul Harvey from Humanitarian Outcomes disagreed with that view, claiming that resilience was in fact just a new repackaging of an old concept. Resilience is not necessarily anti-relief and can be very helpful. Instead of criticising resilience as a concept and hair-splitting over semantics, one should focus on specific things that work or do not work in short- and long-term responses to humanitarian crises.

akers at humanitarian debateProfessor Mark Duffield from Bristol University reiterated the view that resilience was not a new concept. According to the expert, the aid industry reinvents itself every few years and now the Holy Grail seems to be resilience. The speaker pointed out a dangerous trend in disaster relief, which he called ‘digital humanitarianism’ – private sector companies boiling down disaster responses to technical fixes. After all, buying an app that tells you how to avoid flooding or pollution, is not going to solve the fundamental issue of the risk of floods or polluted air and water.

The fourth speaker, Professor Virginia Murray from Cambridge University, defended the concept of resilience, drawing on her experience working with inter-governmental disaster risk reduction processes. She argued that resilience is crucial for those high-level international forums, as it resonates well and is easy to translate.

The discussion that followed raised interesting issues such as:

Is local civil society key to resilience?

While resilience seems to be a fairly clear concept when applied to natural disasters, what role does it have in conflict?

Does focus on resilience detract donor funding from humanitarian responses?

Saving lives today versus saving lives tomorrow – does one occur at the expense of the other?

Is it the role of NGOs to engage in state-building, or should they focus on short-term relief efforts?

It was fascinating to listen to the arguments both for and against. The debate made me wonder, however, if the contention is not in fact over definitions rather than the actual concept. After all, few would argue against humanitarian aid in crisis, where saving lives is an absolute priority, and few would completely rule out development efforts that have a chance of preventing crises in the long run. As with many things in life, it may be a question of balancing one with the other. Whether we use the term ‘resilience’ or not, is another matter. It may be safer to think of another term that stirs less controversy.

Either way, I will be watching this space and looking forward to the next Bloomsbury Humanitarian Debate. Earlier this spring LIDC launched its new Working Group on Humanitarian Crisis that brings together academics interested in conflict and natural disaster from across Bloomsbury Colleges. A few weeks ago LIDC awarded one of its annual Fellowship grants to Dr. Tejendra Pherali from the Institute of Education and  Dr. Karl Blanchet from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to explore the educational and health response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan and Turkey.

Humanitarianism is certainly a very potent area for interdisciplinary, inter-institutional research to explore.

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