The Wizard of Wi-Fi

Last week whilst running a leadership programme for Aviva in Perth, we ran into some technical problems when the display screen and laptop simply stopped working.

The slides froze, the Wi-Fi seemed to disappear, and the result was the learning got stuck.

I looked at my co-facilitator, a little stumped.

“What now?” we both thought.

Disconnect, reboot, and see what happens.

After doing all that, there was still nothing.

Participants in the room paused and then started looking around.

“Time for a short break…” I thought.

Off they went.

It was time to send for Simon.

Simon is our IT expert.

But that description hardly captures what he really does. He’s constantly moving around the centre – fixing something, testing a new tool, trying out a different way to make things work better.

He’s endlessly curious.

And when something breaks, freezes or refuses to behave… he appears.

Within a few minutes he’s untangling cables, adjusting settings, installing software, restarting systems or calmly experimenting with another approach until everything springs back to life again.

I like to call him Mr Magic, as it’s a bit like watching a wizard at work!

The Wizard of Wi-Fi.

But there’s something else going on here too.

Because Simon isn’t just fixing technology, in many ways he’s enabling learning.

A room full of people can’t learn very easily if the tools they rely on stop working. Slides, microphones, screens, connections – they all form part of the learning environment.

And its Simon that quietly keeps that environment running – constantly.

What strikes me most, though, is not just his technical ability. It’s his mindset.

Experimenting and testing until something works.

Which, when you think about it, is exactly what learning looks like.

Trying things, adjusting, troubleshooting and figuring things out.

Every organisation has someone like this.

The person people instinctively look for when things go wrong.

In the Learning Centre, that person is Simon.

And like all good wizards… he’s usually already working on the next problem before anyone else has even noticed it.

Every organisation has a Simon.

Who is yours?