Ever since I came across his book, ‘Ripples from the Zambezi‘ I have been an admirer of the work of Ernesto Sirolli. Here’s a video from a TED talk, where he explains his approach.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXsLtHqfdM&w=560&h=315]

If you look back a few posts in this blog, you will find a post about Book Towns. The unlikely emergence of Hay on Wye as a book town, and the development of the Hay festival out of that, is a case in point. No politician, no planner, no economic development officer, no company CEO could have predicted the outcome of Richard Booth opening his first bookshop Hay in 1962. Without any official intervention, it had become the ‘Town of Books’ by the 1970s. The Hay Literary Festival began in 1988, again a personal initiative, followed in 2010 by the HowTheLightGetsIn philosophy and music festival.

Success cannot be imposed. As Sirolli says, you can offer an idea to someone, but they can’t be forced to acccept it. He calls his approach ‘enterprise facilitation’. That person’s job is to ‘Shut up and Listen!’

Watch the video, read the book if you can. Would this work in Devizes?