The Dillington Mash Up!
Listed on September 11, 2013 in Blogs!Every so often a word or phrase comes into common parlance that strikes you as new and a bit trendy. Many years ago I remember being mystified by the word ‘tad’ meaning a ‘bit’ or ‘little’ – things were a tad small etc. Anyway, the latest word to take my attention is to ‘mash’ as in mash potatoes. To mix-up and blend into something delicious I suppose. I first heard it in respect of pop music. Its the sort of thing that rap musicians might do mashing up lyrics with hip-hop rhythms and a soaring lyrical tune. Of course, being a certain age, I know that this was the sort of this that Malcolm McLaren was doing in the 1980s on his ‘Fans’ and ‘Waltz Darling’ albums. The Pet Shop Boys are also known for sound mashing. Mashing, in simple terms, describes the making of a collage from seemingly disparate elements.
Now as some of you know, I have many laudable traits and a few questionable ones as well. Buying books perhaps falls into the latter category as testified by the necessity of having to build a new library in the garden. Of course, it’s all Amazon’s fault who keep telling me what books I should buy! Perhaps driven by the culture of change which now dominates our world, one of the several subject categories that takes my fancy are books exploring innovation in business. Then out of the blue – or I should say, the Amazon computer system – comes a book titled Mash Up! by Ian Sanders and David Sloly. It’s simply brilliant and so accurately describes how we have to think of ourselves, our lives and our work today. Indeed, when I think about how best to describe our work at Dillington then the term ‘mash up‘ is pretty much spot on. Our work is like a collage of many elements where nothing dominates but where everything relies and interlinks to the other. As a manager my job is a bit like air traffic control bringing in ideas and concepts to a safe and successful landing. Or maybe it is like being an artist with those bits of paper and card constructing the collage. It’s a never ending task. The metaphor is not as important as the doing. It’s very modern and current and the way we have to be today. We’re no longer working in fixed and rigid framework but we’re improvising with loose flexible materials. Now how interesting and exciting is that? The more we think of ourselves as Expert Mashers then the more comfortable we will be with change and innovation whether we are at work or at home.
