Mum’s not the word
The expression “Mum’s the word” has nothing to do with maternity, nor even with preserving familial values. It comes from the older English meaning of ‘mum’ as silence: ‘keeping Mum’ is about keeping...
View ArticleThe Importance of Losing Well: Andy Murray
I missed the Wimbledon Men’s Single’s Final – at least in real time, being abroad at the time – but having now had the opportunity to catch up with it, I think two things deserve celebrating. The first...
View ArticleApprentice 2013, The Final: Never mind the botox …
The tension in my living room is electrifying. Well, it’s not every day you find out you have a bumblebee colony in your back-garden, is it? Only an hour to go, and I can go back to watch them woozily...
View ArticleJumping the duck: the merit of involving others
Writing about business, like much of business behaviour, tends to shy away from anything that we might classify as cynicism: the power of positive thinking is, perhaps, too pervasive an influence....
View ArticleSelf-Improvement Breakthrough or Category Error: Silent Co-Running
As he so often does, Dan Rockwell spiked my interest with a recent article about motivation and enhancing performance. His article – which you can read at his Leadership Freak blog – was inspiring by...
View ArticleSlow, slow, quick-quick, slow …
I know you don’t really have the time, so I’ll try to keep this short. Is 1,000 words ok? You have a window? I am, of course, addressing what Ed Smith recently described as ‘the theatre of busyness’ in...
View ArticleMental and Physical Rooms: removing obstacles for your creatives
Every discipline has its fetishes – inanimate objects attributed with magical properties. (Analysts have spreadsheets, consultants have models, but creatives? If there’s a consensus – and we are...
View ArticleChallenging or Competing? Taking issue with Gavin Kilduff
The world, or at least the publishers of business related material, appears to have an untiring appetite for material that seeks to illuminate business and workplace behaviour by shining a light on a...
View ArticleWhat makes the grunts disgruntled?
You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘perception is reality’. You may have shrugged or expressed a distaste for both sci-fi and psychology, but there is an important point buried in the aphorism. As a way...
View ArticleFor the Want of a Nail: Development Centres and Learning Transfer
In a world with many paradoxical truths, it’s natural perhaps that every silver lining may turn out to have a cloud. In ASK’s 2012/13 UK Learning Transfer Survey, the biggest increase (at an impressive...
View ArticleTaking it on-board, not taking it on the chin
Depending on the context, feedback can be a) an opportunity for learning or reflection, b) a helpful gauge of the impact that we have on others, or c) an unpleasant squealing noise that makes us...
View ArticleHighly engaged, but with yesterday?
If the 1960s and 70s were the era of ‘free love’ (a highly debatable point at any level other than glib slogan-slinging, of course), perhaps the current decade is one of what we might call ‘cheap...
View ArticleThe Importance of Losing Well: Andy Murray
I missed the Wimbledon Men’s Single’s Final – at least in real time, being abroad at the time – but having now had the opportunity to catch up with it, I think two things deserve celebrating. The first...
View Article
