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There has been so much hysteria and so many rantings since England lost to Australia, that I thought I would see what it might teach us about managing change.  Obviously there are two elements to all this, much as there are to most business issues.  There the cold hard facts, and how they are interpreted […][...] read more » Lessons from England’s early exit from Rugby World Cup

We all have times when we need to vent and hopefully, we all to have a special someone that we go to do this.  Learning how to do it well is not only a great service to those we care for but builds a reservoir of goodwill.  However, like so many things, it isn’t as […][...] read more » How to really allow someone to vent

Not according to Dr Bruce H Lipton.  He feels that we can reshape our very genes by altering our beliefs. I have written about this a lot and you can read all about here, Our Reality Model.  Our beliefs filter what data we take in, such as the tale that the indians couldn’t see Columbus’s […][...] read more » IS seeing believing?

According to Harvard Business School Prof Amy Cuddy it is Can I trust this person? And Do I respect them? We tend to judge the former on how warmly we feel towards the person.  This tends to come from a subliminal scan our primal self does to see if their audio matches their video, or […][...] read more » What people look for when they meet us

We all know that loads of time (and therefore money) is wasted in meetings that are either pointless or poorly run, but those very clever people over at the Harvard Business Review and come up wit a little tool to shock us into realising that time actually costs money. If you click on the image […][...] read more » How much does a bad meeting cost you?

I have been working recently with a colleague who is a non-exec on a couple of companies that I work with, both companies have faced problems and it has been interesting observing his input and contribution.  As someone who is always an outsider, I normally don’t get to see this perspective.  In the first company, […][...] read more » The power of the outsider

There has been so much hysteria and so many rantings since England lost to Australia, that I thought I would see what it might teach us about managing change.  Obviously there are two elements to all this, much as there are to most business issues.  There the cold hard facts, and how they are interpreted […][...] read more » Lessons from England’s early exit from Rugby World Cup

We are all guilty of dismissing small talk as a waste of time and I know I’m not the only one who has loudly declaimed how much I hate it.  However, a little more thought and study shows that far from being a waste of time, it is a vital piece of social glue.  Think […][...] read more » Small talk is a big deal

Yesterday it came to light that Toshiba had been cooking the books to the tune of £780m and as a result the CEO & Chairman were forced to resign.  They are not the first Japanese company to run into trouble after the global financial crisis earthquake in Japan, Olympus also had problems.  It seems that […][...] read more » Bending the rules?

I wonder if, like me, you have ever wondered what the word OK actually means and where it comes from?  Or whether you ever tried to find the answer to these questions…?  I never succeeded until now and as a little favour to other lovers of words, here is the story of Ok. As a […][...] read more » The story of OK…