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.
Leadership sin cera
One area of interest for me has always been on words in different languages that have no direct translation into English. This has come back for me from my week on Bute at the Craigberoch Decelerator with people from many countries, several of whom have lived in...
Leadership sin cera
Leadership sin cera is therefore sincere and authentic above all.
Time for white people in the UK to talk about racism
Racism is real, systemic and deeply embedded into the fabric of society in the UK. No, not Minneapolis this week, but London in 2011. I write every day here. Most days the words simply flow out of me, but some days are harder than others. Some days I can't think of...
Would you have fired Michael Jordan?
Would you fire your team's Michael Jordan? credit NY Times (see link to their article on Michael Jordan below) If your superstar performer is toxic for your team, what to do? My answer is, as I've written about many times, including here, here, and here, always the...
Specialist? Generalist? or Specialised Generalist?
Specialist? Generalist? Or.. Specialised Generalist Are you a specialist or a generalist? Simple enough question, yes? Also a common one posed to Tim Ferris, and today I share his five minute Youtube video where he talks about this. I love how he makes it simple:...
Words for things we need words for
At the heart of my writing is a passion to elevate Leadership, so much of which comes from the understanding of self and others. Words that are rich in meaning can also facilitate awareness and understanding of other areas, fields, dimensions. Yesterday I shared a...
For a limited time only…life
What will you do with your limited time. Do Pause, a book by Rob Poynton Nearly 1,000 posts ago, my very first daily post was: "Life is Wild and Precious, Be Present", musing on presence, purpose, with one of the anchors being a Mary Oliver poem that ends with the...
By being transparent you’ll be more trusted
There isn’t now sufficient transparency about why certain difficult decisions are made and with people really understanding how those decisions were reached. I think a lot of it is driven by fear, without an appreciation that transparency is actually a root to better...
Say Sorry
Whatever happened to saying "I'm Sorry"? Almost every day around the world, we are seeing people in senior at the top of government acting in ways that clearly require a full and sincere apology. We simply never seem to get one though. As part of this, I have two...
Don’t force it
Don't force it. It is better to look at a problem fresh in the morning than force it late in the evening. So here I sit on Friday evening, determined to write Saturday morning's daily blog before I "switch off" for the workweek. As I sit and think about writing, I...
Will we be more global or more local? Both
Like many, I am thinking a lot about what our world will look like once we are on the other side of the pandemic. Will countries retrench to being more local or more global? From vacations to travel in general to supply chains, there is much consideration to...
#OpenLeadership – Trust beats Dragons
Here there be dragons. Pirates, Dragons and going off the map This week I was on a great and highly interactive zoom event hosted by the Reinventing Work network. The guest speaker was my friend Alex Barker of Be More Pirate, who highlighted some of the core ways in...
What flaw can you turn into a feature?
"Jaws" is a classic film, despite the fact that the film-makers faced a flaw in that their mechanical shark was both not very realistic and also often didn't work when they needed it. Faced with this "flaw", though, they turned it into a feature. Did you realise, for...
Three types of Clarity
Since the pandemic accelerated into lockdown around two months ago, I've been providing many thirty-minute sounding board calls to support individuals with clarity around one or more leadership questions they are focussed on in that moment. This morning I'm musing on...