An invitation to challenge your thinking
on the Common Purpose 360 Day

People from across the world are being invited to take a step into the unknown to challenge their thinking as leaders on 10 October. The Common Purpose 360 Day is an international event aimed at challenging people to broaden their horizons, seek new perspectives and to find new inspiration in surprising places.

People who are looking for new perspectives might include, for example, a chief executive spending the Common Purpose 360 Day helping manage a restaurant where he frequently lunches and a school principal shadowing the local bank manager for the day.

Organised by international leadership development organisation Common Purpose, the day is being led by the graduates of their leadership development programmes. This Common Purpose 360 community consists of 25,000 leaders from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors around France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, India, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, The Netherlands, Turkey and the UK.

The Common Purpose 360 Day is an open offer to everyone to take some time out of their day and to challenge their thinking as leaders - whatever their backgrounds, ages and locations.

The invitation is to make a little time on 10 October and choose to do something on your own, or with others; something simple or involved; online or face-to-face; local or international - whatever suits your individual circumstances. Common Purpose believes that by widening their horizons, all kinds of people become better at spotting opportunities and responding to the challenges facing their organisation, industry, city, community and country.

Five suggestions on how to broaden your horizons on the Common Purpose 360 Day:

• Read something inspiring - ask a colleague to recommend a book, film, speech or article that has had an impact on them. Some examples to get you started are:
  
  Sir Michael Bichard, Chairman of the Design Council, recommends Ken Loach's Kes: “I saw Kes forty years ago as a young local government officer. The way in which the boy is treated by every public service he encounters shows what an impact these have on people’s lives and how damaging they can be if they are insensitive, inflexible and uncoordinated. I was able to tell Ken in person recently how he had changed my perspective. I never wanted to be part of that kind of bureaucratic response."
  
  Julia Middleton, CEO of Common Purpose, recommends Voltaire's Candide: "It had a profound impact on me ... Voltaire questioned almost every deeply held view at the time, that it is important to challenge thinking - ask the unaskable, especially of those who feel they have achieved certainty - whether it is 1759 or 2008."
  
  Charles Handy, writer and social philosopher, recommends de Soto's The Mystery of Capital: "De Soto's book shows that there is an enormous amount of untapped wealth among the poor. The problem is that they cannot leverage it, in the way richer people do, because their assets- land, buildings, or businesses - do not have proper legal titles. So obvious but so un-noticed until now."
  
  
• Take a 30 minute walk around an unfamiliar neighbourhood on your way home from work. What do you notice? How is it similar to yours, how is it different? What has prevented you from stopping before?
  
  
• Make a new connection: Send an email or pick up the phone to someone you met recently and have been meaning to follow up with.
  
  
• Identify someone who you think is a good leader within your team or organisation, even though they do not have formal authority, and invite them for coffee on 10/10.
  
  
• Read a newspaper that you would not usually pick up. What stories are covered and how? What is different to your usual paper?