So we’ve come to the end of the AmbitionUK pilot with Orange Digital. The participants continue to be mentored by their Orange counterparts and we’re currently evaluating lessons learned with a group led by ex-McKinsey partner, Sir Richard Heygate and Orange Digital CEO Dominic Collins. We’re also very proud to include Kawsar Azom a participant in the AmbitionUK pilot in this stage.
I think one of the things that has become clear to me over the progress of the programme is just how important it is for everyone to understand the specifics of goals. It’s not just about knowing where you want to go and how you want to get there but for young people and organisations, the question that always has to be asked to increase value engagement, is ‘Why?’
For a leader each step of the way has to be interrogated to ensure they are steering in the right direction. Just doing stuff for the sake of it, doesn’t support that endeavour. To build a personal strategy for success that powerful questioning reflex is a profoundly important tool. For many young people who do achieve the targets of qualifications and curricular learning set out before them, questioning is not a requisite skill.
So I think if I can say we’ve helped our young people participating in the AmbitionUK pilot one skill, it is that ability to question their current situation in the context of their goals. The next step is to work out from there, how to achieve them. There are many other things, they tell me, that they have gained on the way – among the most powerful are self-respect and role models among the people they have worked with – but the ability to look beyond what you see in front of you, to take an imaginative leap into the unknown is just where we started with all this.
The next step is for AmbitionUK to become a financially sustainable, corporate training apprenticeship programme. We have so many supporters and are delighted to be building that network of contacts who want to see this initiative succeed.