Or 1000% or a million percent or what ever hyperbolic measure you want to impress me with. 100% will do nicely thank you – but not all the time, probably about 30% of the time will do. And I will pay you 100% of your salary, of course. You see much of what you do…
Years ago there was a pub on the Old Kent Road called The World Turned Upside Down. As a kid it intrigued me why something as mundane as a pub should adopt such a cryptic name. Now I have an inkling: There are certain realms where common sense or the received wisdom just doesn’t seem to…
Human Beings have an uncanny knack of creating problems that don’t exist. You do it and I certainly do it. But using some simple reasoning to shift the point of view can help you get out of your own way and make business life rather simpler and easier: Take care what you think about. The mind…
Some of my work is Facilitation, which I describe as enabling a Meeting of Minds. Sometimes it works like Magic. By that, I mean that good things just happen, without being prompted, engineered or managed. After many years of doing this, I notice that the less structure, management, intervention and expectation there is, the more…
Our world is arguably better connected by travel and communication than at any time in known history. That brings great learning and development opportunities on the one hand, but inevitable homogenisation on the other. I’ve been lucky to have been exposed to a few experiences that have confronted my ignorance and naivety, and have compelled…
Much of what I read about Leadership on LinkedIn concerns squeezing more out of less. It’s about being more efficient, productive, profitable and successful with the resources at hand. It’s about modelling the behaviours of those around us that appear to achieve these outcomes. It’s about getting it right and never getting it wrong. Regrettably,…
There’s a lot being written about EQ (or EI) these days – a sign of society’s evolving awareness of emotion and feeling and a moving away from an over-emphasis on rational intelligence. That’s good. But a lot of what I read strikes me as being both misleading and limiting, the result of rationality attempting to…
This is a question posed in response to my previous article entitled EGO – the biggest barrier to success. The question itself is of great interest and arguably more valuable than the answer. But I will confine myself to a few concise thoughts that may be helpful: Firstly here are some observations to set the scene:…
I’m sat in Edinburgh airport having just had an update on a company that I was briefly involved with a while back. The company is falling apart and its survival is in the balance. It has: Investment, Technology, Markets, Expertise, Experience, Prospects, Good People… Basically everything it needs to succeed. And yet it may not….
I’ve just read a LI article which got me rather exercised – I think I even started shouting ‘No, no, no…’ at my screen. Here is part of the offending text: I tried hard to make the conversation about her colleagues’ noses, not her armpits, and I tried not to be prescriptive about the solution….
Do you think of sleep as a waste of time? Is having lunch away from your desk an irritation? Do you consider the periods of rest between activity as lost opportunities to be more productive and to achieve more? If you do (and I certainly did) I’m going to suggest that the very opposite is…
I recently spent a day with the management team of a small banking software house. Nice guys, young, driven and successful… Just one little problem – the management culture that’s got them to where they are today, will keep them there for ever and a day. The charismatic founder and CEO is able enough to…