Blog
Take a look at recent insights in leadership, strategy and more.
Yes and no
To paraphrase 13th century poet, Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi... “Out beyond ideas of yes and no, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Asking a closed question always seemed to me a clumsy way of opening a conversation about something as complex as the future of a...
The truest guide to a big decision: Thinking, feeling or knowing?
Should we make big decisions based on what we think or what we feel? Should we let our heart rule our head or vice versa? In fact... The truest guide is what we know—what our whole body tells us—our gut, if you like, which is a different thing altogether. That answer...
Ian Paisley and the influence of personal change
If Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness can become best buddies, surely just about anyone can be reconciled... It seems to me Ian Paisley is an interesting example of how changing yourself changes the system—the world around you—especially if you are known to a lot of...
Can we measure our influence?
When we set out to work on an issue on a large scale, it would be handy if we could discern the specific impact of our actions. It would be useful it we could determine how much of what we see changing around us is caused by what we ourselves are doing? That way we...
New Series of Board-level Skills Workshops launched with Glasgow Chamber of Commerce
Delighted to have launched a new series of workshops at the invitation of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, focusing on board level skills. We’ve picked two topics to begin with: Mastering ... ... Effective Board Meetings and Mastering ... ... Facilitating Groups, both...
Why don’t they take action?
Sometimes it surprises us that people don’t do things we think they should take action on, to do with other people particularly (or anything really); even things they’ve agreed to do. Why is that? I think there’s quite a simple explanation... People don’t take action...
Are you sub-optimising yourself?
We’re very mindful of minimising our use of tangible commodities—like paper, for example. So much so, that it’s a kind of obsession. It’s important to conserve scarce resources—of course, it is. We do need to live in a sustainable way. Sometimes though... In...
Leadership isn’t always about teams
We tend to think of leadership in the context of leading teams, at least in connection with work we do. But it isn’t necessarily so. Yes, a leader’s role is often to build the necessary relationships with and amongst the members of a formally-constituted team in order...
Discontinuous change vs. continuous adaptation
One philosophy of change in organisations starts from an assumption that structures, processes and systems are largely fixed at the outset—frozen, if you like. The approach then is to unfreeze the existing set-up, change it as required, developing whatever new...
The power of putting one foot in front of the other
I’m struck recently by the immense power and importance of a very simple idea... If you have a mountain to climb, all you really have to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other. I’ve enough experience of climbing real mountains to know that actually it is...
Leadership isn’t always about teams
We tend to think of leadership in the context of leading teams, at least in connection with work we do. But it isn’t necessarily so. Yes, a leader’s role is often to build the necessary relationships with and amongst the members of a formally-constituted team in order...
Doing disorganised really well
Sometimes it’s striking just how disorganised a group of people, supposedly working together, can be. How do they do that? It’s actually quite hard to be highly disorganised and randomly chaotic without settling into some kind of pattern, even with several people...
Changing habitual patterns
It’s interesting how a two-week break from something is enough to change our habitual behaviour... Returning from holiday, I notice I’m not as self-disciplined about choosing a healthy and energy-sustaining lunch as I was a few short weeks ago. My inner being has got...
Do you decide?
I know you make decisions, but is it really you deciding? It’s a good idea to gather opinion from other people, yes. But... At the end of the day, we need to learn to live without the apparent security of our decisions being fully supported by what other people say—at...
If you realise you’re improvising…
It's great to be resourceful in solving problems with what's available. But that ability carries a hidden danger... We have the option of not dealing the with issue permanently. If you realise you're improvising the same solution to the same problem time and again, it...