This is the essence of Kind Currency and was the message we delivered at the Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival in July. And what a week it was!
When we were was asked to participate in the event, we weren’t sure what to expect. Inject your kind values was the request, as an exhibitor, running activities and as a lightening speaker.
Our activities are designed to make people genuinely think about their actions, how their choices matter, and their individual influence on the world around them. They are designed this way as we get caught up in the day to day routine especially in business, and we’ve been conditioned to think a certain way, a way that doesn’t put people and the environment first.
We need a jolt of reality to make us do the right thing!
And doing the right thing was the challenge we presented in our presentations throughout the week.
As a lightening speaker I was kindly invited to several ‘Sprints’. Each sprint focused on a problem from mould to flooding to cost of living to community engagement to people support. Serious problems that destroy lives and in some cases, cause death.
Kind Currency was created, to support citizens and businesses to take kind action to overcome the crisis problems we face as a society and within that we present challenge because doing the right thing has been made difficult and us humans don’t like feeling uncomfortable.
Our talks provided a reality check, a big one!
We tend to approach problems with a ‘symptoms to manage’ method. But they aren’t just problems or symptoms. You are actually trying to save a person’s life.
At the heart of any problem is a human-life.
And some lives have already been lost due to lack of effective solutions.
Solutions should put the human life as a priority not the symptoms and absolutely above the boundaries of the boardroom and the bottom line. We injected our kind principles to shift that short-term sticky plaster mindset to long-term people-centric goals.
We challenged the teams not on what they think they know but what they need to do. Not to manage the symptoms, but plan solutions that develop real change and create real impact.
We asked people to be brave, be unafraid; we asked them if it was their life affected by this problem, what would they want the solution to be.
We asked them to embody the Kind Currency way – Empathy. Compassion. Understanding. Respect. Kindness.
And most importantly, we asked them just do the right thing. Our goal, not knowing what to expect, was to plant the seed of change and shine a light on a better way of doing business for people and the environment.
What we experienced was far greater!
Those seeds were watered and began to sprout.
Why? Because as I became to learn, the festival is a change-making opportunity given the chance.
We all have the opportunity to put human-life at the centre of our business, we just have to choose to do the right thing.
Be brave and unafraid. Choose the Kind Currency way!
michelle@kindcurrency.co.uk
www.kindcurrency.co.uk