So at the beginning of the year I posted some questions I had answered for a colleague’s blog, as part of his Five Questions series*.
I subsequently decided that I wanted to utilise his idea, and have some people I know answer them too. So what better way to launch Five Questions for Friday (5QFF), than to have Stu answers the questions he posed to me.
Introduce yourself: who are you, what do you do, and why is it important?
I’m Stu. I’m part of the team at Saya Suka Membaca (sayasukamembaca.org), a literacy charity in Jakarta. We’re working so that children in poor communities across Indonesia can have the chance to learn to read, and to love reading. It’s important because literacy – the ability to read with fluency, critical understanding and enjoyment, and to write to communicate and to think – is one of the cornerstones of education, and I think it can change the world.
What’s your most valuable skill?
My ability to learn – and get reasonably good at – a range of skills, and to bring them together to solve problems.
Describe a tool, technique or practice that makes a difference to your work.
I’ve found Steve Blank’s concept of customer development (the idea that we need to think as much about finding and ‘developing’ customers as we do about developing products and programs), in combination with the business model canvas, a really useful pair of tools for understanding the different pieces of the puzzle of bringing an idea into the world in a way that actually works and helps the people we seek to serve.
What advice do you most need to hear?
You are a pain in the backside when you try to do everything – spend more time finding and training people who are better than you at one of the things you tend to hold onto, and let them go.
Suggest an endearing and humorous question for question number five – and answer it.
Today I like “Which character from a children’s book or TV show would you most be?†– I’d be Dangermouse, who is spectacular … and the Enormous (driverless) Crocodile.
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• If you’d be up for being a Five Questions contributor, let me know via the comments section or email.
*Original concept behind five questions: It’s a game where guests take about ten minutes to answer about the work they do and why they think it’s important. The aim is to share about skills, tools and things we’re learning that might be useful to others. – taken from Driverless Croc