» Leadership

Yesterday roughly 70% of the Greek voters said “No!” to austerity (despite same same proportion still wishing to remain within the Europe!)  At the same time the French voters voted for Hollande and his anti-austerity platform.  So both sets of people want to get better, economically speaking, but refused to take their ‘medicine’.  This is […][...] read more » The Greeks & the French vote for Change… or did the turkeys just refuse to vote for Xmas?

Today, the second guest Blog from Maurice de Castro, leadership expert and speaker, telling the rest of his personal story: In yesterday’s blog I referred to a time when I faced the challenge of playing my part in helping to turn a business around that was on a slippery slope to nowhere. I used the […][...] read more » WHAT will it take to Change?

Today, a guest blog from Maurice de Castro, leadership expert and speaker, talking about his personal experience in leadership: From a leadership perspective one of the most crippling environments you can ever find yourself in is the Yes BUT culture. Those two small yet devastatingly powerful words only serve to maintain the status quo and […][...] read more » Yes BUT, No BUT, Yes BUT …

I went to a talk yesterday by Pen Hadow, who rose to international fame when in 2003 he became the first person to trek solo, without resupply by third parties, from Canada to the North Geographic Pole – a feat which has not been repeated and thought comparable in difficulty to making the first ascent […][...] read more » An Arctic explorer’s lessons on Change

I was listening to a program on the radio about GM crops.  The scientists were getting excited as they believe that they will be able to use the genes from Sicilian blood oranges, which apparently turn red due to the cold night time temperatures there, and consequently are high in anthocyanins to help prevent cancer, […][...] read more » GM crops and lessons about Change

Apart from being a wonderful piece of modern American culture and answering the question “Can white men sing the blues?”  this is a great example of using language to convey two meanings at the same time.  The structure of this sentence would normally be used to report something positive, but by making the object a […][...] read more » I started out with nothing… and I still got most of it left!

I was walking in the woods with a friend the other day and the ground was densely covered with wild garlic.  As I have another friend who is very partial to this, I noted its location and recollected that it could be difficult to find, and yet here it was growing abundantly.  It occurred to […][...] read more » Lessons from wild garlic

Stuart Lancaster, the new interim England rugby coach, has stepped into the breach created by Martin Johnson’s post-World Cup resignation.  He faces a dilemma that many bosses face when entering into a new leadership role, how to find the balance between experience and new ideas / capabilities, between proven performers and youthful enthusiasm and vigour.  […][...] read more » New beginnings

We all know that it is a challenging economic environment out there, but my year has started with some rather different challenges.  The first client has had to challenge their leadership team and make some hard decisions about who fits; the second needs to challenge the firm’s way of working in order to succeed.  I […][...] read more » A Year of Challenges?

I was listening to Prof John Butterworth talk on Friday about the search for the Higgs Boson  particle.  This is a theoretical particle that is a necessary part of of our current model of the Universe, but as yet, no one has proved it actually exists, so that is why they built the Cern collider […][...] read more » The missing particle and Good Questions