Insights
People are my library, my writing inspired by what I learn: ideas, inspiration, wisdom, and sometimes some eclectic whimsy for good measure, all centred around #OpenLeadership. At the heart of all of this is that I write to share learnings and to discover my thoughts. Over the years i have written (mostly) daily, over 2000 posts and 1,000,000 words (that last part blows my mind, tbh!). Enjoy browsing.
Be Curious and Learn Widely
This week, I went to see Carlo Rovelli being interviewed by Dara O'Briain (best known as a comedian and host, but also a theoretical physicist). Yes, there was lots of talk about theoretical physics, but what came across most strongly for me is how passionately...
Be Curious and Learn Widely
Learning widely aids the ability to both imagine and to connect the dots. To be imaginative takes a variety of thinking and voracious curiosity in…
Writing as a way to access one’s own mind
Joan Didion My profession is as a Sounding Board, to support them on their journey from Good to Great to Elite. A key part of my role is in a coaching space, to help them sound out their thoughts and gain clarity on what their message is and what they need to focus...
Connection is the feeling of landing in the present tense
Kae Tempest Around three years ago on this blog, I wrote: "the longest writing. can be one line", itself a line from poet Nayyirah Waheed, and containing multiple powerful single-line texts. This week Roland Harwood of WeAreLiminal shared this with me: Connection is...
Can you get your message down to one or two words?
Smart people seem to love complexity, often feeling that the more complex they make things, the more they can find an answer that others can't. The image above is from a scene in The Big Short, set in 2005, where one of the lead characters realise just how much a time...
Be Abundant
While I was away in Cayman, I had a painter come to my house in London and do a pretty significant job both patching up a poor job done by the last painter and also prepare and paint a few areas that hadn't yet been done. We had agreed on a price and also he said that...
Generalist vs Specialist
By my mid to late 30s I used to say "I'm a Specialist Generalist", as my role was to grow the assets of a family-owned business holding company and we invested in widely diverse business sectors, countries, sizes of businesses. The common theme was our focus on...
Write something, post, repeat
Today I fly out of Cayman after a wonderful 17 days. A lot of my regular readers live here and I've had a number of people marvel at how I write daily and ask me my secrets. Well, in over 600,000 words and well over 1,400 daily posts, I've actually written about this...
Listening for Context
What do you hear when you listen for context? Lift above the detail, the content, the day to day, there is always something to notice.
Change can start with changing the conversation
One way to change the conversation for Cayman starts with a commitment to build the economy and society around being the green capital of the…
Catalysing behaviour change
Behaviour change can sometimes happen fast, sometimes slowly, and sometimes needs something to catalyse it.
Try, or no Try?
On the other end of the spectrum (full delegation) was: “Try, or No Try?”, ie “I’m giving you no guidance as I am not at…
Towards a Quiet Mind
Being around my three boys in Cayman has had the effect of my subconscious allowing me to slow down my mind. I’m grateful for that…
Make your lives extraordinary
Whatever age and stage we are at in life, we can always carpe diem, we can always choose to make our lives extraordinary.