Introduction It’s sometimes hard to see beyond the bad news, but the world is approaching an age of abundance. For example, solar power is exponentially improving in terms of efficiency, and the cost is falling at a similar rate. Being able to desalinate seawater (solar powered) will transform the equatorial world and will lead to […]
Are we really headed towards a future without jobs? This is THE question of our time, everyone is paying attention to the remarkable explosion of progress in technology. It’s a question that’s been asked so many times in the past, perhaps this time we should be asking “is it different this time?” The fear that […]
Share This: In his public persona Donald Trump isn’t known for his supreme self-control or consistency. These are two traits that are essential for leaders to excel. The ‘Traits’ theory of leadership posits that good leaders demonstrate particular traits. This is an observational theory, essentially based on the study of good leaders and the typical traits that […]
The 3 key challenges facing the mature millennial If there is one aspect of the millennial mindset that should give policymakers cause for concern it’s their prevailing attitude to retirement. While the majority (54%) of those in Western Europe polled by PwC expect to be better off than their parents, only 5% indicate a willingness […]
Share This: New ideas come from experiencing new things, meeting new people and exciting people’s imagination. You rarely get new and groundbreaking ideas in an environment where employees can’t interact, are chained to a desk and are essentially keyboard warriors. Routine processing work is not for entrepreneurs. That’s the kind of work that is ideal […]
Share This: The old saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none” has a bit of a ring to it. We generally use this as a disparaging remark about a colleague or about ourselves in a self-effacing way. Sometimes being able to do a little bit of everything is positive in a manager, but ultimately […]
Share This: Leaders need to be good at listening. Sounds intuitive enough right? but it’s amazing how many can’t actually do it. There’s an old adage which refers to the balance between our ears and mouth. “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” Epictetus […]
Procrastination is a nasty killer virus. It kills projects, destroys businesses and ends careers. The good news however, is that it’s curable. You know the score, right? We are all theoretically cash ‘rich’ and time poor. Relatively speaking of course, compared to our parents, we have more buying power in terms of ‘luxuries’ and we […]
Share This: If you ask people about the differences between leaders and managers, there’s a remarkable consistency of response . People know the differences intuitively. John Kotter has studied the differences between management & leadership extensively and his research unpins this summary: ‘Leaders ‘v’ Managers, the differences’. The famous Scottish-American industrialists and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was […]
Share This: Educator, technologist and writer Steve Regan guest blogs his thoughts about Transhumanism, the future of humankind and how man and machine will be indistinct in the far future Dennis Sorensen lost his hand in a fireworks accident some 10 years ago and the Dane has just completed a one-month trial with a bionic hand […]
Share This: Happy teams are more productive. It’s mid-August 2016 and between them Laura Trott & Jason Kenny have hoovered up a number of Olympic medals in various cycling events. Between them they have now won 10 Gold medals. The story doesn’t stop there however, Laura and Jason are engaged to be married in September 2016. […]
Share This: In this post Pete Wilson looks at 9 change ‘distress indicators’, the presence of which may well indicate that there is trouble ahead. In the context of leadership we recently discussed the two sides of running an organisation, ‘run’ and ‘change’. If you are very lucky all of your change initiatives will be planned, […]
Share This: The aim of McGregor’s model here is to seek to explain the motivational styles taken by individuals when adopting their management styles. In his book (‘The Human Side of Enterprise’, 1960) McGregor argued that there are essentially two approaches to managing people. Theory X & Theory Y. Management Styles Model – When it […]
Share This: Globalisation & ‘People’ In our last post on ‘The Future of Work’ we wrote that “That period in your day we call ‘work’ is about to change drastically, and both workers and the organisations that they work for will have to change too.” In this post we want to look at the three […]
Share This: Pete Wilson gives some practical advice on how & when to use this ‘legendary’ group development model. There are two sides to running a business the ‘run’ side (or business as usual) and the ‘change’ side. The trick that many organisations have to pull off is not letting one bleed into the other. It’s […]
Share This: ‘Live to work’ or ‘work to live’? Unless you’re one of the lucky few people who have a charmed life, most of us spend more of our waking hours at work than we do at home. That period in your day we call ‘work’ is about to change drastically, and both workers and […]
Share This: Business change is notoriously difficult, it’s oft said that it’s like ‘herding cats’. The trouble is that we don’t really know how to frame our thinking around change. Typically we start out with a problem, something isn’t quite working right, or some outside influence leads to a degree of dissatisfaction at the current […]
Share This: Always, always be yourself… Some of the worst relationships I’ve had in the world of work, and indeed outside of work, have been with people who lack consistency. For example there is nothing worse than sitting down with your line manager and agreeing a framework for decision making which empowers you and liberates […]
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