Accountability is a two-way street. When you have committed to what you will do and I have committed to what I will do we are able to hold each other accountable for what we have to do. So far so good. But if we leave it till the end of the task to follow up [...]
“A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.” ― Truman Capote While I would hesitate to argue with a writer of the stature of Truman Capote, good conversation is rich and complex and is based on more than intelligence, [...]
Robert McNamara, one of Harvard’s most famous MBAs spelled out the following approach to military strategy: “We must first determine what our foreign policy is to be, formulate a military strategy to carry out that policy, then build the military forces to successfully conduct this strategy”. This was the classic case study approach to strategy. [...]
We all know those two clichés about the elephant, the first about its encounter with some blind men (1,190,000 hits in Google) and the second about it being in the room (69,700,000 hits). The reason sayings become cliché is that they highlight truths in such a compelling way that, for a time at least, we [...]
What is an exciting adventure for one person may be highly stressful for another. Since 1956, when Dr Hans Selye coined the term ‘stress’, our understanding of stress, its causes, impacts and remedies has grown. The many remedies for stress can be summarised by five generic approaches: Clarify values and goals. Develop self-affirming relationships Reframing [...]
I have a presentation called "Your Life in Light and Colour". In this presentation I use the painting of a watercolour as a metaphor for life, or at least life in business. This has been well received and now I have decided to take it forward as an offer. I am rewriting the material [...]
You have been developing an offer for months. Now as you are preparing to launch, one person on your team continues to disrupt meetings with negative comments about the product. What do you do? Well, eventually you fire him of course. And in so doing you rid the team of the annoyance. You also rid [...]
In 1924 Wernher von Braun strapped six rockets to a small wagon and watched in delight as the wagon roared around his street and then exploded. The local constabulary were less impressed however, and took the twelve year old boy into custody. And so began an incredible story leading up to July 16, 1969. On [...]
In “Three Rivers of the Amazon”, adventurer Tim Biggs describes a run in with the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas on the Apurimac River in Peru. The kayakers had slipped past the guerrillas unnoticed. When they tried to warn the rafting team they were spotted by the soldiers who, in a moment of confusion, dived [...]
Peter Paul Rubens painted ‘Consequences of War’ at the end of his life, in response to the devastating Thirty Years War in Europe. Mars tramples everything that is good and beautiful as he is dragged off to conquest by the Furies. This massive painting hanging in Palazzo Pitti is spell-binding. We find [...]
