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‘People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

And what you do simply proves what you believe.’

Simon Sinek

I didn’t tune into my ‘why’ for a long time. It floated around in my head a bit but it didn’t get any traction. No one, not least the Careers Officer I met once at school suggested even thinking about it. I just always did what I felt was instinctively right; the next thing.

It was my eleven year old daughter Alys who helped me to unravel the ‘why’. Finding the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ has taken longer and its continually evolving.

Had education given me the opportunity to learn by doing, to consider my potential, what I enjoyed, was I was good at, what or who had inspired me to date, what I cared about, the opportunities to work with technical creative processes to play with solutions to small, real and world challenges…If I’d learned to ask myself questions, and learned to think in a certain way… If I’d had those insights as a young person, I might have found my path much, much sooner sooner.

Like all big challenges it changes as we learn and get a a better grasp of the problem but here and now this is the ‘why’ I’m working with.

‘I’m putting my energy into discovering how best to help people to grow their creative problem solving capability, explore their purpose, and consciously become the entrepreneurial thinkers, value creators and change makers of the future, whatever they choose to study.’

The language is different, depending on who you speak to, but I’m not the only one working on this challenge. We are many. Learning practitioners, academics, careers advisors, students, graduates; We’re pushing over, under and through, trying to collaborate and be heard, by the decision makers in universities who can unlock the potential; the resources to learn to make it happen.

I went to the IEEC Conference in Liverpool this month. Mary Bradley from MaryBradley.co was running a workshop and she asked the group a really important question.

‘It’s been fifteen years…we’ve been banging on about what enterprise and entrepreneurship education can do for learning across all disciplines in Higher Education. Why is little changing?’

Like all great questions it made us think and share our ideas.

But my reflections went deeper. My truth is we’ve been banging the wrong drum. We haven’t found the words to inspire people, to align visions, to create a movement; to accelerate the change.

How about we start with ‘why?’