ragmatic or aspirational is a preoccupying paradox for leaders in these challenging times. Uncertainty brings an urge to control, to proceed with caution, to keep our heads down and focus on the task in hand. It’s a useful strategy, to an extent. Things still get done, the practical day-to-day stuff. Yet it can also be...
According to the New World Encyclopaedia, ‘The word community is derived from the Latin communitas (meaning the same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means “common, public, shared by all or many.”[1] Communis comes from a combination of the Latin prefix con- (which means “together”) and the word munis (which has to do...
Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify recently became the latest organisation to take an axe to meetings. All recurring meetings with more than two people have been banned, Wednesdays are meeting free and big meetings – of 50+ people – have to fit a six-hour window on Thursdays and are limited to one a week. You may...
As babies, as young children, and young adults we (hopefully) are taught, eventually, to have and value our independence. Psychologically this is a vital part of our development as we learn to become our own person, find our own sense of self and identity. We separate from the parental guardrails and make our way in...
Okay, so Covid hasn’t gone away but we are learning to live with it in a world of work that is immensely altered for many organisations and their people. Though there has been a return to the office for many it’s on a hybrid basis. The centre of gravity has shifted somewhat from a fully...
Being someone who sometimes (ok well maybe often) misses the moment to stop and celebrate the joy, success, achievement of a given moment because I have my eye firmly planted on the future and what’s still to be ‘done’, I have been reminded over recent weeks of the power of taking a moment to celebrate...
We can go on holiday. We can’t go on holiday. We can travel to green list countries but they might be on the watch list so they might have gone amber before the plane wheels touch the tarmac. We can mix with others…well as long as they are in our bubble, or they are six...
One of the things I’ve noticed as restrictions on our day-to-day lives begin to ease is how noisy the world has become, or at least my sensitivity is heightened. Whichever, it’s had me thinking about noise at a number of levels…the noise, for example, the media created around our PM’s wedding – where it might...
Have you ever considered what it could look like to be truly joyful in your work. What if those who lead were committed to cultivating a joyful workplace. Joy isn’t a word we often hear associated with the world of work. In fact, so often it’s the opposite – sometimes a huge sigh, for others...
It has long been said that we in the UK do know how to bring a certain quality to important moments in the life of the Nation or the world. Of course, we have a lot of rich history and access to all sorts of symbols of pomp and circumstance to draw on given that...