There taketh place, from time to time, a phenomenon in the BLOODHOUND Project which I can only describe as Noble-ing. Not nobbling – very much the contrary – but Noble-ing.

BLOODHOUND prides itself on being a ‘flat’ organisation. Every Indian is a Chief, and empowered accordingly. If Conor La Grue wishes to sign up a new Product Sponsor – he signs on the dotted line for BLOODHOUND. He does not have to refer upstairs within the organisation. He will of course confer with other Team members to make sure he’s not signing up for Portaloos when what the Team actually need is a NASA-quality fire-suppression system, but having done that, his chop is good. Likewise if Mark Chapman or Ron Ayers or anyone else on the engineering team wish to pursue a design avenue – they talk among themselves, and then just do it. This is what a ‘flat’ organisation is about. You’re in charge of your thing – just go do it.

Richard Noble has long been both pioneer and apostle of this principle in business. He calls it ‘flat’. I call it the omelette system, whereby the idea is that everything cooks at the same rate, or more or less. Or sort of most of the time. Either way, the credo is simple. Do away with the ‘Vertical Integration’ business model, where you have sign-off after sign-off wending its labyrinth way up the command-chain until it reaches a CEO or board meeting who may or may not have a thorough grasp – or indeed any real grasp at all – of what is occurring. Replace that with the ‘flat’ layout where the experts in the field have the power to exercise the principle of JFDI – Just F… er… Flipping Do It.

So BLOODHOUND is a flat organisation – right?

Well, er… ye-e-s. Sort of flat–ish…

The problem with a flat organisation is that, well… no organisation can be completely flat. Homo sapiens, or any other terrestrial tribal group come to that, simply does not normally operate that way its wonders to perform. Look at any tribe of apes or national governments per exemplar.

So even the flattest of flat outfits does inevitably require a heat-source at the centre of the omelette. In BLOODHOUND’s case this heat-source is quite unmistakeably one Richard Noble OBE.

Now Richard can be many things. He can be immensely sympathetic and kind. He can be charming. He can also be forceful and… er, shall we say, a tad on the abrupt side when thwarted. But above all he is a mover and shaker with a personal cruise speed of warp factor two and enough radiating energy to cook an omelette the size of Spain. If the multitude was to be fed with five loaves and two little fishes I can never escape the feeling that R Noble, had he been around, would have invented the burger wagon in ten minutes and been there in twenty. Because Richard is a visionary. Always, always the visionary.

(Not always, lest I seem sycophantic, the right visionary at the right time. I remember walking away from his ARV 2 training aeroplane project some decades ago because I thought it was too much innovation in one go. I was right – the ARV failed for just that reason. It was too early. But I was wrong long-term; there are now something like 50 manufacturers worldwide producing similar aircraft, and surviving very well thank you. Sometimes a visionary is just simply too far ahead of the game…)

Not the case now. Now the BLOODHOUND timing is exquisite. Pity that the need for it is so saddening – because Great Britain has been failing its upcoming generation lamentably and horribly. The UK has, in the past decade, slid from fourth in the world for science education to 14th; and from eighth in maths to 24th. Some distinguished leaders must have worked really hard to achieve a failure-rate like that. And obviously BLOODHOUND cannot change it single-handedly overnight. But it’s going to have a bloody good try.

Which is why I’m sitting here in this conference room at the University of the West of England along with the core members of the BLOODHOUND Education Team (BET). BLOODHOUND Engineering had a summit back in May, which began with a short Noble-ing…

Now it is Education’s turn, for this is the start of the great two-day BLOODHOUND Education Summit of 2010. And it, too, will commence with a Noble-ing.

 

Very genteel, or course…

When I wrote about BLOODHOUND Education a year or so back, the BET was five persons strong. Now there are 17 people seated around the table – interestingly, not far off 50 / 50 male / female. BLOODHOUND’s in-house Education Team has roughly doubled, and very importantly there are also present high-powered luminaries from education sponsors / partners such as Intel, Promethian, and Premier Farnell. Some of them, I kind of suspect, may not have experienced a Noble-ing before.

In fact as Noble-ings go, this one turns out to be quite genteel. Perhaps Richard’s breakfast dynamite pills were a tad off.

There is no need to remind the assembly that education is the project’s first priority, states Noble in the course of powerfully so reminding them.

The BET has done a great job so far in the experimental stage; now first base is reached it has to re-structure; car roll-out will happen in December 2011; by then the audience has to be sufficiently educated to make use of the data flowing from the car in the early run-trials; this will be the start of Second Stage Education. And if the run-up to the Second Stage is not fully structured and orchestrated then the entire project is wasted…

Oh, gentle, gentle stuff.

It has gone kinda quiet in the Summit room. Glancing around, everyone is looking serious. But no-one has an air of bottle-of-whisky-and-revolver-in-the-library about them. These folks knew this – or something very like it – was coming.

Richard continues. The schools involvement will probably at least double to more than 7,500 schools by Dec ‘11; this must be catered for; new lesson material and distribution needed; the BLOODHOUND Ambassador programme to be very greatly increased; operation of the two main BLOODHOUND training establishments in Bristol and Manchester to be settled…

Of the original £615,000 educational grant from the DCFS – Department for Children, Schools and Families, now no longer existent in the same form – just £100,000 remains; BLOODHOUND education rights will be transferred to a new charity, the Bloodhound Education Trust.

Oh, and we need the full education plan up to Stage Two within a week; and full costings for the whole shebang by the end of October. Any questions?

There are no questions. Richard packs up his papers. He has driven for two hours to deliver this 20 minute homily, and will now drive two hours back to his office. Nobody cavils. In this flat organisation he is the chief fund-raiser, and at this time is particularly aflame with major contracts to work on. He has to currently raise £225,000 for each month of BLOODHOUND’s existence, which by some miracle – not even involving bank robbery or blood diamonds, or at least not visibly – he is so doing. Just. So if Richard has to depart, he has to depart. His parting remark to this Summit is; “This is going to be your plan. Call me if you need me”.

Flat organisation.

Now I’ve admitted before that the part of BLOODHOUND I understand least is Education. So I can only say that if it were given to me to corral this lot for what I can only think of as Stage One-and-a-Half of the educational effort, there would probably be a prominent niff of Scotch in the library followed by a loud bang.

The BET simply get to work on it.

In the nature of the beast there will be few final decisions made this first day – this is route-mapping, not partaking of banquets in every Mc-Roadkill joint on the way. But the part that really staggers me as I sit here is the sheer magnitude of the task ahead. Take a couple of examples…

A year back I wrote that “BLOODHOUND Ambassadors are not selected lightly, and there is never going to be a marching army of them. Maybe there might be sometime – but not yet”.

 

‘Yet’ is pretty much now…

Okay. Think of it. Nearly 4,000 schools involved as of this day, and possibly double the number by the end of next year. And as of this day exist just 104 BLOODHOUND Ambassadors from the 1K Club plus 37 from sponsors Intel, Newburgh and Atkins – total 141. Not enough. Quite clearly not enough. So BLOODHOUND is looking to expand to – wait for it – to somewhere between 750 and 1,000 Ambassadors. And if 7,500 schools get involved, then even that will not be enough.

It would appear that ‘yet’ is pretty much ‘now’.

Especially with the arrival of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (I Mech E) on board as a new sponsor. The I Mech E already has some 500 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Ambassadors, most of whom go into schools spreading the message of engineering. And many of whom, to tell a secret truth, are currently at least somewhat under-utilised. But are perfectly capable of adding BLOODHOUND to their arsenal – which can only be good, yes?

Well, of course.

But…

The way it works is this. BLOODHOUND is highly picky. You have to become a STEM Ambassador first, then a BLOODHOUND  Ambassador secondly. If you make it…

As it so happens I became a STEM Ambassador myself the other day. I went on a one-day course, filled in lots of forms – and lo, in due time received a Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) clearance and a STEM Ambassador Certificate. Whacko! This means I can now go into any school and offer my assistance in promoting STEM subjects. Which, given my personal grasp of same, should not take up too much of their time.

Only thing is – the STEM Ambassador course did kinda verge on the… well, er, puzzling, shall I say. I was in a class of about 50 and sitting on a table which included a nuclear physicist and various other most able and serious engineers, all of whom felt they wanted to give something back to the education system.

We were given three little magnets, some pegs, a pot of straws, various other small household objects, and tasked to create a STEM school lesson with them inside 10 minutes. I left the nuclear physicist and the others scratching their heads, and sidled outside to smoke my pipe.

Now please be clear about this. I write for BLOODHOUND but my opinions are my own. From Outside the Box. I do not expect BLOODHOUND to agree, endorse, condone, or back me in any way. So I state my purely personal opinion when I say I found the STEM Ambassador induction system to be… well, not entirely deep-down challenging, perhaps…

Whether I am being fair or not – and whether my experience was typical or not – what is certain is that BLOODHOUND is dead stone-cold serious about their own BLOODHOUND Ambassadors. So much so that each must start out by being an accredited STEM Ambassador in the first place (complete with the all-clear from the Bow Street Runners), will then be closely interviewed by BLOODHOUND – and after that, assuming survival so far, attend a full two-day course at BLOODHOUND’s new Education Centre at the Manchester Communication Academy to get them properly up to speed. Then they will be furnished with real high-quality teaching aids. If they get that far…

This for up to 1,000 Ambassadors. Within the next year. With the majority going ‘in-school’, but also a substantial cadre helping out at events – unloading, assembling, shoving, pushing the exhibits, talking knowledgeably to the visitors without smacking any of the more obnoxious ones, then again shoving, pushing, dis-assembling to re-load up again afterwards.

There are 22,000 STEM Ambassadors in the UK. But BLOODHOUND’s target, as I understand it, is far and away the biggest single-purpose Ambassador programme ever set up by any one organisation. Period. And BLOODHOUND is not exactly the largest organisation on the planet…

BLOODHOUND is seeking three new employees to help make this happen – Ambassador training, management, logistics etc, etc. Apply if you are dedicated. Do not apply if you value your liberty at weekends – or at any other time, come to that. Or your sleep. Or any other normal human function for the next couple of years. Apply if you have the engineering skill of R J Mitchell, the patience of Mother Teresa, and want to be part of the most exciting adventure in the world. Not otherwise.

 

Then there are lessons…

Then there is lesson delivery. Which, in the hypothetical library, would have me starting on the second half of the Glenmorangie and fingering the Colt.

Nearly 4,000 schools have engaged on the BLOODHOUND website to get access to the education material.

Only thing is, nobody knows quite what they’ve done with it.

Okay. Can’t be a rocket-science question. Just send out an electronic questionnaire to those nearly 4,000 schools enquiring of them what they did do with it and what they thought of it. Then wait for the flood of replies and work out how to analyse them…

Well, turns out that ‘flood’ would be pitching it a bit strong. No flood. 46 schools respond. A bit over one percent.

I feel my jaw dropping. The BLOODHOUND Education Team look – well, not exactly chuffed, but neither wildly dismayed. They are professional educators and they see this all the time. Seems it’s famous in the education world that you do not get feedback from teachers. Nada, or very nearly nada. They mostly simply don’t reply to you. I find myself thinking unkind thoughts such as perhaps they can’t spell BLODHOUND. But subsequently both the BET and a few teachers I know assure me that it’s largely sheer workload – by the time you’ve marked 3B’s and 4B’s homework of an evening, decided that the Chainsaw Massacre, however popular with the 10 year-old girls, might not be entirely suitable for the Christmas play, then contemplated what to do about Jones Minor’s regrettable habit of dissecting frogs during the maths class, your interest in responding to questionnaires, however worthy they may be, is kinda circling the plughole.

Still, 46 responses are 46 responses – and there is the upside that you can analyse 46 responses a great deal more quickly than 4,000. And that you should learn something…

The BET allocate one hour to this task to take an initial pass at it. The Chair, Claire Rocks, splits the BET into four groups, hands out various responses to each group, then – as far was I can make out, because this is commencing to look like a super-complicated three-card trick to me – swaps over teams or allocations or something. I lose track, which would surprise nobody except I have pasted such an Intelligent Look on my face that one team member asks me very kindly if I have indigestion.

However much I might be left behind it seems the BET is familiar with this method of brainstorming. They are seeking to end up with two columns – on the left responses which come up repeatedly, and on the right responses which come as a surprise.

Well, to cut to the chase, there is a bit of a surprise, which presents itself in both columns. To paraphrase – so these are my words, not BET’s – teachers at pretty well all levels prefer (a) a fully structured lesson designed to slot neatly into the school curriculum, and (b) said lesson if possible to be handed to them on a plate with all the trimmings such as electronic teaching materials. There is some appetite for ‘starter packs’ – where BLOODHOUND provides the bones for a lesson and the teachers put the flesh on them – but the running favourite is for lessons on a plate.

This is subtly different to BET’s original assumptions of two years ago – but the BET members look profoundly interested rather than amazed. And certainly not daunted. If lessons on a plate are wanted, then lessons on a plate they shall have…

Well, I’d be ruddy well daunted. Daunted for starters by the sheer multiplication game.

Take one particular subject – say, wheels. This has relevance to physics, technology, engineering, maths, and even aerodynamics. Five different lessons? Not necessarily, but the whole does at least need to be easily break-down-able.

And then you start on the age groups. Nowadays called Key Stages, beginning with Key Stage 1 (age 5 to 7), and going on up to Key Stage 5 (age 16+). Clearly you need different lessons for the different Stages, so multiply Wheels by five (before you even get into Further Education and Diploma level).

Then remember that wheels is only one STEM subject out of maybe 30 BLOODHOUND directly scientific subjects – so multiply by 30.

Then realise that there are another 35 subjects concerned with logistics and operating in the desert, which involve everything from business studies, media studies, geography, engineering and construction, right through to food technology. So multiply them by five as well. Then add on the teaching material the BLOODHOUND Ambassadors are going to need…

I could press buttons on a calculator and quite easily come up with a terrifying figure to the north of 1,500 education packages – but that would be meaningless, there being so many nuances and cross-referrals. The task is not so Herculean as that – but it’ll certainly do until Herculean comes along.

 

The short answer is no…

Can the BET do all this by themselves? Well of course the short answer is no – although the educators do assure me afterwards that lesson construction isn’t as time-consuming as I might think if you’re an experienced educator. Well, okay – but the answer overall is still no. So BLOODHOUND is also working with the likes of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Design and Technology Association, I Mech E, Intel, Promethian and others. Plus, shortly, a completely revised BLOODHOUND website with much more education material complete with the ability to track and count the downloads to provide a great deal more feedback.

Well, all fine and dandy. But, um…  who the hell’s going to pay for it all?

So far, BET have eked out the original Government education funding. But Government funding and initiatives have one – well, more than one, but one particular – major drawback. Mention the words ‘General Election’ and pretty well all departments stare like a rabbit into headlights and then bolt for the warren, from where nobody ain’t signing off nothin’ new, no Sirree. Then when the dust has settled and there’s a new Government they still ain’t signing off anything new ‘cos they’re all busy keeping their heads down and waiting to see if they still have a Department. Especially in the current financial climate.

So Government educational funding might just be on the cards again when they all – or the remains – start breathing again. Which means no time in the immediate future.
Hence the new BLOODHOUND Educational Trust. Which of course will have independent Trustees, ‘cos that’s the way these things work.

Charitable status smacks of rattling tin cans on street corners to me. But apparently it doesn’t work like that. Charitable status means that BET can go to very big, very long-established charitable Trusts who only contribute to charities, never to anything Governmental or remotely commercial.

Now that would worry the hell out of me – but the BET do not seem overly concerned. Confident might be a big word, but they seem… well, confident.

Well, well, I suppose they’re right. They’d know. If BLOODHOUND Education ain’t seen as a worthy cause, then what the hell is?

I personally feel it a travesty. In a day and age when you can acquire a degree in hairdressing or golf course design, this major STEM resource finds it advantageous to go the charity route to get the message across. What are we about, Britain?

But of course, what do I know of education…?