This week some firms have offered to pay for London staff to commute by taxi. Really? "What's good for the business is good for the individual, not the other way around" I use this phrase often with business leaders, though the context is vital, as we can look at this...
Ed Percival - My Greatest Mentor in Life This is a PSA. Make a list of your mentors. The people who took chances on you. The people who saw something in you that you didn’t necessarily see in yourself. The people who gave you the big breaks. Call them. Text them....
Stop telling people about yourself. Be Yourself. Image from my phone wallpaper, (c) Visualise Value My Mentor Ed Percival often reminded me to #BeMoreYou, yet part of who I am is a frequent struggle to find a balance between telling and showing, between doing and...
This week I caught up with his interview with the authors of the recently publised Angrynomics, Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth. One of my favourite podcasts is from David McWilliams, who looks to take economics and make it both understandable and practical for all of...
We heard endlessly during lockdown of #WFH or Work From Home. About a week ago we were threatened by the UK Government (via a national newspaper) to ‘Go back to work or risk losing your job", as if millions of people working from home were not working. This Ad then...
What does your hybrid future look like? If you have not thought about it yet, I recommend you start now. I strongly believe in remote working. However, today let me take it a level further. For now let’s call it “WorkAnywhere”, as the idea of remote working still...
I'm a little exhausted by uncertainty Yesterday my weekly #WhatComesNext.Live show guest was Jerry Frentsos, an inspiring masters swimmer (20 world records and counting) whose mantra is his website LiveIntentionallyWell.com. Jerry had so many brilliant ideas,...
So, today where I live (London) there is a definite "back to school" energy, as the symbolic public/bank holiday yesterday, Monday Aug 31st marked the end of the summer holiday/vacation period. I even saw a queue of at least 15 people mid morning today outside a shop...
Chadwick Boseman - died August 28th 2020 #WakandaForever https://twitter.com/EssexBarrister/status/1299647181423607808 From Alexandra Wilson, inspirational young black woman barrister and author of ‘In Black and White’, on the passing of Chadwick Boseman this weekend....
Thoughts on the passing of Chadwick Boseman. Some of us share and process openly and outwardly what is happening with us, what we are going through. Others of us are much more private and may never share other than with those the closest to them. While we may learn a...
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." Radical changes are happening to encourage more cycling in the City of London Today I want to use the example of shifting...
Be aware that you can make regular small adjustments to keep optimising, to look for that "continuous improvement" as athletes do. This picture was taken earlier this week at a favourite "coffee and bacon roll" stop on a bike ride with my regular riding buddy. Yes,...
A tree gives glory to god by being a tree. In other words, "Be More You." As a leader, don't try to be the perfect image of what is expected. As I write this, Wednesday, I had planned to spend much of the day writing multiple posts for this site for the coming days....
"Seek to record what we ought to have thought" Knowledge Speaks, Wisdom Listens; This week a wise friend shared with me something he was taught by a mentor back in university: "Seek to record what we ought to have thought" They recalled this piece of wisdom after I...
Ubuntu is an African philosophy captured in the story above as "I am because we are", about valuing community above self-interest. I love this, not least because it is also an easy way for readers to understand my philosophy around business. To add a layer, though,...
Taking blame and taking responsibility. A foul in an NBA game. Couldn't find any pictures of an NBA player raising their hand to acknowledge a foul though! I played a LOT of Basketball for about six years through university and directly afterwards. When I played, the...
A bent house in Lavenham This weekend I took a few days away out of London for the first time in over five months due to lockdown. Part of that is to change perspective, to experience and view life from a different angle. In photography, an ultra-wide-angle lens is...
Amplify your strengths: invest the energy to be even more exceptional. I'm on a break out of London for a few days. The change in scenery and, literally, breathing different air, both are making a real different and charging the batteries. Of course, I still commit to...
One of my favourite funny out of office emails, this one must truly torture some senders! I've always found the idea of an "out of office" email pretty absurd, particularly since around fifteen years ago when it seemed by then everyone had, first, a blackberry, then...
Disappointment = Expectation - Reality: the disappointments many are facing in this pandemic as our reality doesn't match up to our expectation. Many years ago, as a young Accountant taking up a new job, the chief executive guided me to, in my forecasting, to be...
"Thinking Fast and Slow" is one of the bestselling books on behaviour, capturing the essence of the work that won Daniel Kahneman his Nobel prize for Economics (for more on his work on heuristics and biases, this long read has some depth on it: "You cannot eliminate...
How can you unplug? In the Northern Hemisphere typically August is a month for slowing down at work, taking vacations, generally recharging the batteries, even "unplugging" completely. Of course, this year in a pandemic so much is not as before, yet I am finding most...
Saudade is defined as a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost. The love that remains. Writing this on a quiet Sunday, happy in the knowledge that my three sons in Cayman are safe and well in a...
Our environment does shape us, whether that is weather or people. Be aware of how your environment shapes you. The parched common near me in another heatwave, summer 2018, from : Petrichor – How our environment can impact us As I write this, it is a grey and cool day...
MJ's expression after an inexplicable "flow moment" Today I share with you one of the ultimate flow moments in my life so far, one, where I was so deep in "the zone" for hours that astonishing things happened. Through this, I hope this helps you reflect on when and...
(c) Gaping Void "Innovation is simply doing things differently and doing different things" Today a story about an artist and a simple innovation inspired by us all being on Zoom in lockdown. Oh, and some reflections on setting up an office back in 2013 that was, in...
A learning from another writer, around "Say Yes to Less" "Are you busy?" seems to be one of the most common questions people ask socially and around work. "I'm active" is my answer, as I talked about with my friend Kay Scorah on yesterday's weekly WhatComesNext.Live...
I work with people who have already moved from "good to great" and are hungry to move from great to elite so that they can make an even greater impact. Josh Waitzkin, image (c) Creativity Post You are already “successful”, making a difference through your leadership...
No, not a weighty post on leadership, but today I will continue to share around my lifelong quest for the ultimate bacon roll. A divine bacon roll, from LeSwine I am currently learning about Josh Waitzkin, author of "The Art of Learning", and this quote around one of...
Courtesy of White Owl on Twitter I saw this quote on Twitter the other day and replied: "That is beautiful and has so many layers. Thank you." White Owl then replied: "You’re welcome Tom. I think its beautiful too. The power of a single sentence." I love brevity. In...
Simple things done well beats sophisticated mediocrity. Skoda Octavia - "it does what it says on the tin" Recently, for the first time in several years, I once again became a car owner. Much though I love high performance and sporting cars, this time I was more...
Image from the trailer from the film of The Divided Brain. This weekend the London area is hot, way too hot to use my brain, so I postponed all Friday work to Monday (when it will be moderately cooler!). For now, sharing with you an RSA Animate video with some core...
O wad some Power the giftie gie usTo see oursels as ithers see us!from "To a Louse" by Robert Burns The power of seeing ourselves objectively is a topic I return to again and again from multiple angles. Today reflecting on two experiences yesterday and on the gift of...
What comes after what comes next? Antifragile by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, giving a way to thrive in a world of "The Black Swan", a book I reference in my blog early on in the pandemic, March 8th 2020, called "Act Now" As readers may know, in addition to daily blogs, I...
No answers as to why so many leaders fail to take responsibility, but plenty of reasons for all of us to choose to take actions…
sPanoz LMP-1 Roadster, powered by a huge 8 cylinder engine When we "fire on all cylinders" it is a metaphor for everything going smoothly and at full capacity and effort. When we are "not firing on all cylinders", then the assumption is that we are under-performing...