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Pausing the Blog

Pausing the Blog

Pause icon multimedia entertainment perforated paper This is the 1444th day in a row where I have posted on this blog, so almost four years of posting every single day. I often encourage clients to take breaks to recharge. Though I love writing every day, I am also...

Drop the pink elephant

Drop the pink elephant

If I say to you "Don't think about the Pink Elephant!", what are you thinking about? Yes, the Pink Elephant. It is November 2004. I had just finished speaking to five hundred tourism industry professionals at a national tourism conference in Scotland and I had overrun...

Balancing Tradition and Innovation

Balancing Tradition and Innovation

This week I had the privilege to be given a tour of the production facility of a third-generation family business by one of the current generation. One of many resonant moments was when they proudly showed me a piece of equipment their grandparent had installed so...

What does this visual make you feel?

What does this visual make you feel?

Chart of the Week from Section 4 This week Roland Harwood asked this question on LinkedIn: What (or who) have you changed your mind about recently?I heard this question the other day which got me thinking and I found it very hard to come up with an answer, which I...

Be Abundant

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

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

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...

Know when to follow the energy

Know when to follow the energy

Ultimately the learning is to "follow the energy", to create the opportunity and see who is energised, who makes the effort to connect and to meet. So, as regular readers know, I am in Cayman right now. Due to Covid, first time home here in 18 months, so am keen to...

Do not tolerate the intolerant

Do not tolerate the intolerant

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and...

Soon Come!

Soon Come!

Soon Come! Today is (as long as covid testing and results processing go according to plan) my last day in quarantine in Cayman. I soon come out! So excited to meet up with so many old friends over the next ten days or so. I just looked at my diary and realised I have...

My first quarantine pause

My first quarantine pause

I arrived in Cayman last Wednesday evening, all going smoothly I will get the all-clear to release from it by Tuesday evening. Today, Monday morning, I'm therefore entering day five of six of this quarantine "pause". In short, it has been a very quiet few days,...

How to never have to fire anybody again

How to never have to fire anybody again

Businesses with a strong culture may never have to fire anybody ever again, they will simply leave. The above highlight is from Allistair McCaw, speaker, author and specialist in leadership and culture, with deep experience around elite athletes and sports teams....

Being together is not like Zoom

Being together is not like Zoom

Being together is not like Zoom. As so much attention is given to adapting to different working norms, broadly hybrids of working in an office or working online, less than two days into quarantine I feel like sharing some thoughts. Being together is not like Zoom I...

An update to my “Now” page

An update to my “Now” page

In November 2020, inspired by Derek Sivers, I set up a "Now" page on my site, then wrote about the idea in: "Tell people what you are focussed on now". The idea is simple: Most websites have a link that says “about”. It goes to a page that tells you something about...

Mentoring addresses privilege gaps

Mentoring addresses privilege gaps

There are many forms of privilege in our world. One that is sometimes less obvious is knowledge gaps. Mentoring can address this. If your parents (and perhaps their peers, neighbours, family members) never went to University, or if they never owned their own home,...