Monday morning. My first calls and meetings start in an hour and will continue until late, so I sit here with one task at hand, to write the daily post to go out tomorrow morning. Normally that feels great, except today, there is a problem. I have no idea what to...
(c) Florian Radarte "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" also goes along with "a change is as good as a rest" I wrote some time ago in "Stop the “Busyness”": "Put simply, for leaders, less is more. Simple, yes? But how many of you just skipped over this and...
My favourite business artist is Hugh McLeod, @hughcards on Twitter. Love this one. Change comes from feelings, not rationality. Feelings connect us to why we would choose to change. "When you get clear on the WHY, the HOW is easy" I see organisational change so often...
This is the look of a batter striking out swinging. This is a picture from the book, "The Science of Hitting" by Ted Williams, where Ted broke the strike zone into 77 baseball-sized circles, colour-coding each one based on where he had the best chance to hit the ball....
"In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine" These words are from Benjamin Graham, author of "The Intelligent Investor", who I referenced just the other day in "Patience, Venture Capital, Buffett and Kipling" The...
Seth Godin inspired me to commit to writing daily over a year ago, something he has done for nearly two decades. His posts are without images, vary from a few words to much lengthier pieces, some with many links to the work of others, some with none. Recently he...
Quite the view, isn't it? I recently spent a week back in Cayman, where I had upwards of thirty meetings, talking with well over sixty people, including leading a four-hour session for a team of twenty-two. I worked out that in all that time I had less than two hours...
At a sea swim in 2014, aged 16, my son Iain.. or, as I called him after this, "The Answer".. "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?" "42" ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I often share on this site under the theme "Writing I...
This week I brought you wisdom for Leadership from the sagest of sage bears (apologies to Paddington, who comes a close second), Winnie the Pooh. Today, I bring you the legend that is Eric Cantona, who I also wrote about...
"Awareness is the greatest agent for change" ~ Suki Laniado Smith "Leaders who focus on building both internal and external self-awareness...can learn to see themselves more clearly — and reap the many rewards that increased self-knowledge delivers" ~ Dr Tasha Eurich,...
Again and again, I share learnings from leaders, writers, artists, often around themes core to leadership such as presence. Today some Wisdom from the sagest bear of sage bears, Winnie the Pooh. Not for the first time, this is a post inspired by Georgie Loxton. With...
The view from my friend and host's loft in Brooklyn a few hours ago, just after sunrise on a cold and crisp 4c / 39f degree morning. The inspiring view has me musing today on the power of changing and challenging your perspective. I just spent a week in Cayman and...
This week I've been home in Cayman. Seeing my boys, clients, friends. There are so many wonderful elements of living on that small island of only around 60,000 people, and at the same time, there is an element of "big fish, small pond" mindset, particularly when it...
When I was a teenager, occasionally at school someone (yes, sometimes that someone was me!) would let slip a swear word in class. The teacher would typically say something like "watch your language!". Interesting turn of phrase, now I think about it! Language is...
This week I am back in Cayman, with a full week of client meetings, a client workshop, meetings with friends, contacts, and, most of all, my boys. What occurs to me at this moment is the powerful combination of : Gratitude + Presence I do love Emotional Equations, yet...
At the Rio 2016 Olympics, swimmers were given free sets of "Beats" headphones. Brilliant product placement, as it had been realised that almost all swimmers like to close themselves off from the world before their race and do so in a cocoon of sound. Recently I...
Today two simple shares from some writing I love, from the poet Robert Frost. I've written many posts here on this site around "Writing I Love". Why do I do that on a site about #OpenLeadership. Simple. Leadership starts with "Self-Leadership". Beauty, whether in...
The Golden Rule states: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Platinum Rule: "Treat others the way they want to be treated." The Golden Rule is cited so often it seems like a wonderful and positive aspiration. However, the first time someone tells...
My first daily post on this site was one year ago, October 15th, 2017, with the post "Life is Wild and Precious, Be Present" One year later, this first daily post remains a favourite for me, as does the wonderful poem by Mary Oliver. Today, though, the whole post has...
"Nightswimming deserves a quiet night" ~ REM Leadership takes many forms, yet common to any style is the adage that "it is about what you do, not what you say". For those who model quiet leadership, it is absolutely in what they do, not what they say. This photo from...
Soon I will be travelling for ten days to Cayman and the USA, blending seeing clients, family, friends. Whilst most of my active clients are on retainers, over the years I've built deep relationships with a number of clients who call me in periodically to support them...
Monday 1st October. It is 7:35am. I got out of bed at 5:30am in Edinburgh, then got a bus and then the train through to Glasgow. It is almost freezing, I am kicking myself for not bringing my winter coat. Even though it is early, people are walking at high speed...
I had lunch recently with an investor who expressed frustration about founders of startups and scale-ups. They are not a fund partner, nor VC or from the Private Equity world. No, they actually built a business of value and lived it for the whole journey through to an...
"Our world seems like a heap of fragments and it is hard to see how they cohere. Wisdom has been replaced by knowledge and knowledge has been replaced by information. Pieces of data. Chunks of data." Iain McGilchrist, author of "The Divided Mind", speaking in the...
Today let me put it to you that, in many years and thousands upon thousands of hours as a coach, the single most powerful tool for coaching is Context. Today I'll talk specifically about the power for an individual of setting a personal context and three focal areas...
“Writing I Love” is an occasional series on this site. Sometimes a book, sometimes a poem, a quote, sometimes simply a line.
So, to that beautiful quote, but first, to “repetition, repetition, repetition”. I work with leaders around the world and often around communicating and engaging their…
We met recently for breakfast in Glasgow and afterwards he sent me this hysterical clip of Mr Bean as a conductor, then later shared some…
If we look into the past for the true source of innovations, I wonder, by considering innovation in such a way, what we could learn…
Today a story about the power of beautiful moments, such as the one in the photo Earlier this week, as I wrote about here, I took time out to go to the country, to slow down, and simply to walk with a friend and walk his dog. Prior to that day, I'd been feeling a bit...
I moved to the UK after nearly 28 years in the Caribbean and mostly focussed on the Americas. Yes, am a white male speaking English…
Today a story about self-awareness, the value of slowing down, and walking the dog.
Today I’m inspired by Eliud Kipchoge, who on September 17, 2018 utterly obliterated the marathon world record, so have come back to the theme of Smashing…
Are you considering investing in a coach for yourself, and/or for members of your team? If so, how are you going about selecting them? Are…
Vision is not Leadership and Leadership is not Vision, but they are linked. Leadership is about taking people with you on a journey, and it requires…
This week I was at my favourite recurring learning experience, a "Facilitation Shindig" led by the amazing Julie Drybrough. This experience inspired today's post, about Mastery being about the ability to improvise and that ability coming from incessant practice....