The role of the modern CEO is not to have the right answers, but to ask the right questions and trust the team and the…
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Dance while the music is being played
Take a moment to be present to the “profound and galvanizing lucidity” of Alan Watts.
When to work less, when to work more?
Thoughts on when to work less, when to work more, inspired first by Ursula Le Guin, and then by a conversation among parents of adult…
Surprises are a clue that you’re missing something
Surprises are a clue that you’re missing something. Dive in and figure out what.
Using they as your generic pronoun
In well over 1400 daily posts on this blog, there are many such stories and I always use "they" as a generic pronoun. Let me tell you a story about why I started this, then talk about why else it matters now more than ever before. I am both open and confidential. I...
Writing is a Behaviour
Writing is a behaviour. It is something I do, otherwise the crush of thoughts in my head would have nowhere else to go. If writing…
What are you putting back into the river?
Eventually in life, you realize that it’s not what you get to take out of the river, it’s what you get to put into the…
Listen with Passion
“Listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.” Harriet Lerner. I passionately adore listening to people.
Seeking Wa 和
Wa is both the oldest name for Japan and brings a sense of “Japaneseness” in language and other ways to the country and people.
The most stable stool has three legs
The most stable seating of any kind has exactly three legs, a three legged stool. The stool will always rest as a highly stable platform.
What happens to a dream deferred?
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then...
Recovery is part of training
I recall when my two oldest sons were competing at swimming at a high level. They trained over well over 20 hours a week, then had university studies to do. Aside from that they mostly ate and slept. I learned from them that this was not aimless, it was planned out....
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...
Writing as a way to access one’s own mind
Joan Didion My profession is as a Sounding Board, to support them on their journey from Good to Great to Elite. A key part of my role is in a coaching space, to help them sound out their thoughts and gain clarity on what their message is and what they need to focus...
Connection is the feeling of landing in the present tense
Kae Tempest Around three years ago on this blog, I wrote: "the longest writing. can be one line", itself a line from poet Nayyirah Waheed, and containing multiple powerful single-line texts. This week Roland Harwood of WeAreLiminal shared this with me: Connection is...
Can you get your message down to one or two words?
Smart people seem to love complexity, often feeling that the more complex they make things, the more they can find an answer that others can't. The image above is from a scene in The Big Short, set in 2005, where one of the lead characters realise just how much a time...
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
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...
Listening for Context
What do you hear when you listen for context? Lift above the detail, the content, the day to day, there is always something to notice.
Try, or no Try?
On the other end of the spectrum (full delegation) was: “Try, or No Try?”, ie “I’m giving you no guidance as I am not at…
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
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...
How to shorten Airport Immigration queues instantly
Last week I flew into Cayman for the first time in 18 months. Impressively efficient through the entry process was, it did take two hours for one flight, as in addition to regular immigration and customs needs, there was covid test checking and entry procedures for us...
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...
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,...
Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors
In 1955, Jonas Salk unveiled a vaccine for poliomyelitis, an infectious disease that can cause paralysis. He did not patent the vaccine, he gave it to the world. When asked by the renowned journalist Edward R. Murrow about the idea of patenting a vaccine, Salk...
The quality of our decisions depends on the quality of the conversations we have
"The quality of our decisions depends on the quality of the conversations we have"Bruce Lloyd, in our recent WhatComesNextLive conversation As I note on the page for our conversation (linked above): "Dr. Bruce Lloyd is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Management at...
Do you have a Digital Will? (and how to create one)
Highlighting the importance of setting up a Digital Will and a few tips on how to do this. I've lost my contacts!" The iPhone became widely used about ten years ago, a few years after Facebook. For several years after that, I can think of one particular friend who...
Pausing to Read
I used to read voraciously, devouring at least a book a week. However, in recent years, particularly since I started posting every day nearly four years ago, I get into the rhythm of reading books far less often. In this, I have had a tendency to judge myself for not...
To play it safe or closer to the edge?
There is no growth without stretching, so if we play it safe all the time, we remain the same, we don't grow. The same applies to our impact on others. Do we want to always play it safe, to have comfortable conversations? Or, on occasion at least, do we want to move...
How to make a difference rather than simply making a point
The key to storytelling to not only make a point but make a difference is all in telling the right story in the right way to make the right point to be truly in service of the person with whom you are sharing it. As I have written around multiple times (and yes, by...
Which is better? Repetition? or Variety?
Do you prefer all your M&Ms the same colour? or love the variety? Do you prefer repetition or variety? Yesterday I took the same Sunday ride route, tracking my heart rate and performance against the previous week to assess how my performance had changed. Of...
I’ve forgotten how to travel
This weekend I've spent literally hours preparing for an upcoming trip to Cayman. Yes, the amount of paperwork and tests now needed to travel in the age of Covid has added to this, but it occurred to me this morning that I've forgotten how to travel. A few short years...
Pausing, Together, Patiently
Yesterday I was on a group call around the theme of "the Power of Pausing". As I listened to the esteemed panellists, I recognised that their themes were all around pausing as individuals. It occurred to me that we can also choose to pause, together. I then thought of...
If you want to change the world start with yourself
"What do you have a burning desire to change in the world?" This was a question posed last week in a workshop I participated in. What came to me was: If you want to change the world, start with yourself.Gandhi Whatever we seek to change external to ourselves is and...
Creating a Healthy Tension through setting your Values
The four core attributes for #OpenLeadership The graphic illustrates the four core attributes or values of a leader who wishes to choose #OpenLeadership. Now let us look at how these create a healthy tension by taking them into two sets of two BRAVE and HUNGRY...