In order to make failure possible, you first have to try, to commit, to go where it may scare or even terrify you, to be vulnerable, to say "this might not work" and do it anyway. Very recently I was disappointed to witness this first hand in someone. They were...
Quite a view, isn't it? In my life, I've travelled to around 70 countries, but still, my favourite city is Edinburgh. This week I was up there from London for an overnight business visit with a friend and collaborator and stayed the night before the meeting with him...
This photo of and quote from the great Eddy Merckx hangs in a frame behind the spinning instructor's bike at Revolutions in the Cayman Islands. As I sit writing on a wet Sunday morning nursing a sore Achilles tendon, I'm missing my regular Sunday morning ride and...
Growth mindset is key to leadership. Curiosity is key to leadership In my youth I learned and played musical instruments, yet somehow got in my mind that I couldn't improve, couldn't grow to a level that would satisfy me. I then lost my curiosity and sense of wonder...
This image was embedded in the award given to each member of a seminal Leadership Growth Programme. More in this article. Business can be Beautiful. Today I share an excerpt from a post from Alan Moore of beautiful.business, featured recently in "Is yours, could yours...
“You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means” ~ Inigo Montoya, swordsman and revenge obsessive, from The…
CEOs are responsible for the performance (and, one would hope they recognise) and the wellbeing of all the people in their team. Often, though, they…
Is yours a Beautiful Business? If not, could yours be a Beautiful Business? If the question intrigues you read on, and if you connect to it at the end of this piece, let's talk. Soon. Recently I was introduced to Alan Moore, founder of Beautiful.Business and writer of...
Now, what if you could never fire anybody in your organisation, every, under any circumstances? What would you do differently? This is more than a thought experiment, I am seriously asking you to consider this question. More and more organisations are fully or at...
"Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high." ~ Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix The Netflix "Culture Deck", updated in 2018 and hosted on their site prominently here , is full of gems of great clarity around the Netflix culture, including this one...
Meraki is the modern greek term that translates to: "to do something with soul, creativity, or love; when you leave a piece of yourself in the work." Maria Callas, also Greek, is my favourite opera singer of all time, and one would call her a Meraklis. A Meraklis is...
"Live in the now to provide for the future" Exquisite. I love distilled beauty in writing, and gosh how much I love anything that can relate to leadership and business. This hits the mark on all levels for me! People are my library, and today I am most thankful for...
Taken after a photo shoot, looking over the Thames to Temple. London is such a city of both tradition and permanence as well as dynamism and growth. Yesterday I had a wonderful experience with a highly creative photographer, Simon Edwards, as we walked around London...
Today a reflection of preparing in advance so that we can discard what we prepared. I then share similar learnings from an interview with the director and writer of the latest Mission Impossible movie. I love movies and recently watched this movie. It was terrific,...
Seth Godin writes daily and has over 1,000,000 followers on his email list. I write daily and have around 1,000 email followers. Metrics. For many years a part of my work was engaged with digital marketing. So much of that was about building traffic to websites,...
So, the last two articles I wrote here have mused on romance, idealism, romanticism and magical reality. Leadership: Romance, Life in Full Colour and Magical Reality Life in Full Colour - Cry, Heart, But Never Break In (so far) nearly 300 daily articles on this site,...
Today I'll muse on life, art and how what I have learned links to leadership in business. Romantic Idealism. First, I'll look being a romantic and idealism in leadership. Next, I'll explore what I mean by "Life in Full Colour" and then taking risks in leadership....
Modern Elder Academy – apply now ! Join @chipconley and the faculty and be among the first leaders to experience this. Act now, space is…
In the last year, I've had the opportunity to talk to several thought leaders, speakers, writers who I have very much admired and respected for many years. Two of those people are Nilofer Merchant and Chip Conley. Nilofer I just talked to for the first time recently,...
Are you or your business lucky ? do you benefit or suffer from coincidences? I don't believe in luck, I believe in serendipity. Serendipity is not luck, it is not coincidence. Serendipity is something you can choose to create for yourself and in the way you lead and...
Today a Leadership lesson at two levels around the use of Idioms. Level One: Leaders, avoid USING clichéd idioms. Cliché : "a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought." Idiom: "a group of words established by usage as having a meaning...
In the early 1990s, we saw the beginnings of the widely available internet. Dial up only, super slow, very expensive. At one point I read an article in, I recall, Time Magazine, about the explosion of use of the internet by people, often older generations, seeking to...
When I was a young Chartered Accountancy student I had an old MG Midget just like this one. A tiny little car (and yes, somehow I fit in it!), it had a faulty starter motor, so I became very familiar with push starting it. As a relatively big and strong guy with a...
Yesterday's post, "Beauty in Brevity" mused eclectically on the power of art and prose to communicate to us powerfully and rapidly through being concise. Today, I turn that focus to messaging in business and leadership. In many situations, the shorter and simpler the...
Recently I've been musing on the power of art to communicate to us at deep levels with brevity. It occurred to me that writing can also do the same. Around art, I recently had the great pleasure of being invited to accompany someone to an exhibit at Tate Britain....
Today I was in a great conversation about procrastination. I've written before on this topic several times, so feel free to click the link for several minutes of excellent procrastination time! Today a simple thought to ponder. If you are actually really feeling busy...
I've been writing recently about balance, about having only enough Structure to allow Flow. Today I will share a story, about Flow and Kung Fu Panda! For background, one area of my work is to facilitate leadership meetings for businesses and organisations around the...
I write often about presence, about flow, about stretching out of our comfort zone. I fully embrace that I am a romanticist, an idealist, I look for the best in people and situations, I see people deeply, their ability and opportunity to live their life to their full...
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” ~ Steve Jobs Yesterday I wrote about "Commitment, Boldness and Magic" from a log cabin under majestic...
I write this at 7am in a log cabin under two majestic tall pines in the redwood forests of northern California. I came here from London this weekend to attend the wedding of one of our Modern Elder Academy cohort that came together and bonded tightly during our week...
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Will Durant An absorbing, energising and inspiring conversation recently has me musing on the process and the act of writing and what it can bring to us. In that conversation, I was nudged...
"Between Stimulus and Response There Is a Space. In That Space Is Our Power To Choose Our Response" That quote is attributed to Viktor Frankl, author of "Man's Search for Meaning", the most personally impactful book I've ever read. Two recent meetings have had me...
Some of us always like to take time to make reasoned, rational, analytical assessments before reaching a decision. Other typically make decisions very quickly and are thought to be highly intuitive. For those who make quick decisions, how do we know if those decisions...
Or is it? I believe in balance and rarely in set answers, in yes or no, either/or, binary choice etc. Being human is complex. We are rational and yet also driven by emotion, by what we sense, what we feel. So, absolutely let us look at what Socrates meant and then...
“Zemblanity, the opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design.” ~ William Safire, The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time One could call this an Unpleasant Non-Surprise. Thanks to my friend Bruce...
“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” ~Bruce Lee I've written again and again...