My Library
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.
Pay Someone
Adam Smith talked of "Division of Labour", one of the core concepts in his foundational work that laid the basis for what we now know as Economics. Prior to the industrial era, most of us were generalists, we did everything we needed to provide for our family, from...
Pay Someone
If you can specialise in something that pays more, then do more of what you can specialise in and pay someone to do the rest.
Find a Purpose that has you
Whilst Bravery and Brevity are key, without a strong link to Purpose that everyone in the organisation feels strongly connected to for the long term, all Strategic Plans will lose momentum. Over the years I have been introduced to many leaders and organisations who...
The Plateau of Latent Potential
My Purpose is making potential possible. This means I live in this in my work for my clients. Beyond that, similarly minded people are those I connect to most. In "Always be Batman", I wrote: “The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the...
Building bridges for CEOs
The new triple bottom line. Scale for Impact This week I was at a stunning event called Basecamp. On the second morning, the facilitator created an open space for a few people to choose to step forward and offer a topic they are passionate about, creating an...
Gravitricity – innovation can be simple
Innovation = Doing things differently and doing different things I coined this definition of innovation some time ago. Sometimes it is about technology, sometimes simply about changing opening hours of a shop. Recently I came across an idea to harness gravity in...
Who gets on the bus? Enrolling your followers
My singular focus with clients is to support brave and transformative change. In #OpenLeadership, such change is neither top-down or bottom-up, it is integrated, iterative and involves everyone at their level of context. In Cascading Leadership as a core model to...
Knowledge Speaks. Wisdom Listens.
One of the things that I admire the most about the inspiring Chip Conley is his ability to distil what he learns down to elegant simplicity. One such phrase is "Knowledge Speaks. Wisdom Listens". Recently Chip has started daily mini-blogging on what he calls "Wisdom...
Learnings from Writing: Purpose, Commitment and Patience
I write because my Purpose drives me to share what I learn; because I choose to make that Commitment. This image is of the site traffic for this site over the 18 months to October 2019. In that time period traffic has grown well over five-fold. Overall, the site has...
Sharing some simple models for leadership
Over the last two years and more I have now posted over 750 daily posts, as well as collaborated on numerous projects and begun developing a book on leadership. Out of the well over 350,000 words written and many thoughts developed from listening and working with...
Being More. Leading in our ambiguous world
"This idea of purity and you're never compromised...you should get over that quickly...the world is messy, there are ambiguities" President Barack Obama These words from President Obama in a recent talk that I tweeted about this week (read on for link to the tweet and...
No one ever made a decision based on a number
No one ever made a decision based on a number. They need a story. An unexpected "bucket list" moment Last week I was sat in the centre of the front row at the Royal Festival Hall as Hannah Gadsby came back on after her incredible show Douglas to receive the...
Curating 13 learnings from 13 years of Brainpickings
At certain stages of life, many of us focus more on Editing rather than Accumulating. For me, part of that is to cut back on the newsletters and news outlets I read and pay for. One that will always stay in my core list is Brainpickings from Maria Popova, a weekly...
Pay respect to your competitors
Derek Jeter on his retirement. Re2Pect "Business is war. I go out there, I want to kill the competitors. I want to make their lives miserable. I want to steal their market share. I want them to fear me and I want everyone on my team thinking we're going to win."This...