I recently listened to a short series of radio shows called "The Death of Nuance" The opening programme highlights how much, in our 24/7, social media driven world of "news", we see things in binary, yes/no, either/or terms. I often say I'm a "both/and" person, am not...
Yes, I have a red armchair and footstool like this for my "reading spot" Yesterday I spent three hours reading during "working hours". Brought up in Scotland with the pervasive calvinist work ethic, part of me thought "I'm not working, I should be working". I then...
Focus on taking time to meet up with leaders and to listen and also share the experiences. Breasclete, Isle of Lewis, (c) James Smith Photography "Leadership is about people, end of story" and people are people with common human wants, needs, drivers. We can learn a...
Struggling on a snow day in the UK. Yesterday I scraped ice and snow off a car for the first time in many years (which amused me as someone used to Cayman winters!) and the weather forecast is for wind and freezing conditions for several days. This was a week where I...
Do you find that people are generally fair and even generous towards you? Last week I put a bedframe I no longer needed up for sale online. One person quickly expressed interest and asked for current pictures of the item (rather than from the IKEA website, as I had...
Yesterday morning, as I got up and drank my coffee, I checked the news and saw that an English cricketer was playing in India at that moment and closing in on a double century, to scoring 200 runs in an innings. I turned on the TV to watch as Joe Root, captain of...
My first job interview after qualifying as an accountant, almost thirty years ago, was with Kel Thompson, at that time Managing Director of Cayman Airways. Among many lessons that stay with me from that first interaction was him telling me he expected me to make...
We have a real role in helping our clients along their way, because they do have dreams. They have dreams to grow and build. Scale for Impact model, from the "Leading from Purpose" article The model above is core to my thinking on #OpenLeadership, on the type of brave...
While investing in businesses, show up, do the work, contribute, be patient. tommccallum.com site traffic to January 2021, roughly doubling each year since I started writing in October 2017 Inspired by Seth Godin's practice of daily posting, I started the same...
Sometimes the best-laid plans go awry. So, we adapt as we must when circumstances call for it. Best to accept and adapt rather than to resist. The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ MenGang aft agley,From "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns As the couplet from one...
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”~ Albert Camus This is...
Who in your life can help you keep going? Waterlillies by Claude Monet “I am distressed, almost discouraged, and fatigued to the point of feeling slightly ill. What I am doing is no good, and in spite of your confidence I am very much afraid that my efforts will all...
"We've always done it this way" (aka what I call "the six most dangerous words in business") "if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got" “you can't see the goldfish bowl you are swimming in” "When others Zig, you Zag" "Talent hits a target no...
Recently my friend, Leadership Coach Jeff Raker (part of the growing tribe of past guests on #WhatComesNextLive, his show here) and I were talking around two themes. One was around building momentum towards a goal, the other the power of visualising yourself at that...
If we could hold our plans more lightly it might enable us to be more compassionate with each other and ourselves, when events do not meet our expectations. Image from "Do Thoughts Even Matter", from the Three Principles Living site In my practice (always practice,...
Today, for the first time in a long while, am curating a post from Seth Godin, whose practice of daily posting dates back decades and who was an inspiration for me to start doing so over 1,200 posts ago. At this very difficult time for humanity, Seth's concise words...
Where is the Life we have lost in living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?T.S. Eliot, "The Rock", Faber & Faber 1934. referenced in: "The Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom Chain:The Metaphorical...
Yesterday it snowed here, only the second snowfall of the year in this area. Given how hilly it is here, it was not a day to take the car out, so I walked a lot and it was great to be out crunching in the snow for a change. As I walked, I also mused on the passage of...
Raise the expectations you have for yourself and your business. There is no bar. Image from earlier post: "Growth Mindset and Pole Vaulting" As we move through this pandemic, I'm seeing more and more countries making comparisons to other countries. I'm very proud of...
Make time to mark moments that matter to you. Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President and Kamala Harris the Vice-President. a Field of Flags replacing inauguration crowds At 12pm local time on Thursday, January 20th, as per the twentieth amendment to the...
So, with much emotion, two days ago I watched the inauguration, far more emotional than I realised I would be. Two moments stood out for me. First, hearing the words Madam Vice-President spoken with such great emphasis by Amanda Gorman. After hundreds of years,...
Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in history, shared her poem, The Hill we Climb, at the inauguration of President Joe Biden. For there is always light,if only we’re brave enough to see it.If only we’re brave enough to be it.Amanda Gorman, The Hill we Climb...
Perfection is the enemy of progress We live in deeply uncertain times, so it is unsurprising and understandable that I hear some people putting off any kind of strategising, planning or acting for themselves personally or for their business. However, rather than...
British Army Mission Command: Don’t tell your people how to do their job, simply make clear what the Mission is and empower them to step up and achieve it. How could you speed up the process of Covid testing drivers to get them through a bottleneck and keep supply...
Mornin' to you! How is your Sunday looking? Big plans? Here in London, as regular readers will know, we are locked down for, well, the next couple of months or so I'd figure, so I have no plans, nothing I have to do today. Now, when it comes to my work with leaders, I...
Take care of your people , I wrote yesterday, reflections from a call with a CEO who had focussed on that one thing since the pandemic had begun, a focus that has been key to their business entering 2021 thriving. In that discussion it felt clear that this was only...
Companies: Take care of your people. This week I had a catch up call with a past client, a CEO who I hadn't spoken to since early in the pandemic. They and their business have come through things well, largely due to foundations laid year before at multiple levels....
Alison Macondray, "Genius extractor" You might think that podcasts are often too long and too meandering to be of interest and value, but really, if you look, you can find that some are shorter, perhaps thirty minutes long, and full of stimulating, entertaining,...
Sir Angus Grossart Inspired by Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger and an avid student of them as I am, I often use the phrase: one of the easiest ways to make money is to think longer term than the next guy With that I often refer to "patient capital" and am, my bias I...
Lockdown sucks. Truly. Apologies for some London-centric posting of late, it may not feel relevant to friends and family in Cayman where they are Covid-free, or even the USA where very little of the country is under restrictions, but when you live in London, we are in...
I sense that many of us feel the need for distractions from the winter of Covid. Regular readers will know I focus on presence and, linked to that, often I look at beauty. One moment of beauty came at the weekend, when I went outside for a while and saw the wondrous...
London, January 2021. Lockdown 3.0. Depth of winter. Covid raging. I have barely left my home for three weeks other than to go for winter walks. Yes, this is s***, it truly is. There is value in acknowledging we are in what a friend calls "the s*** zone". Once we...
So, how do you speak on Zoom without saying a word? Well, back in November I came across a great idea, cards to communicate when on group video calls. In that post I wrote: In the early days of email, we had no emoticons, but we did have text equivalents (hence the...
This image depicts how this lockdown feels to me. The other day I had to drive down a motorway on an essential errand. Yes, the signs tell you to stay at home, save lives, protect teh NHS. In addition, it is the darkest time of year, plus virtually every car on the...
A core "why" for my daily writing is to share learnings, so, yesterday I had an inspiring conversation with a business leader in the USA, who had come across a post I wrote called: "Enabling Constraint" and was intrigued by the idea embedded in the term. One thought I...
Richie Porte supported Chris Froome to win the 2013 Tour de France (see video) Professional road stage cycling is unique in that it is a team sport in which the glory goes to one individual, to a lesser exten to the team, then the other team riders are often forgotten...