The passing of well-loved celebrities is always marked not only by an outpouring of grief but also by an outpouring of newspaper copy. These panegyrics are often parodied in Private Eye with versions such as the “celebrity and me” and “how I taught the celebrity everything he knew” whereby the writer manages to place themselves at the centre of attention at the expense of the late-departed ...
Read MoreIn my mid-teens I was given as a present the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. I started to read at the beginning and worked my way up to letter C where I arrived at Churchill. I was hugely enjoying reading his famous motivational and inspirational quotes when I read: “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.” This hit me hard. Although it wasn’t what he me...
Read MoreThe UK General Election in May 2015 produced a result that few had expected. One of the outcomes was the virtual disappearance of the LibDems. At the time I predicted that it could mark the re-emergence of a new political force based on the original Social Democratic Party of the mid 1980’s (the fact that there are no signs of life to date is yet another example of my lack of prowess ...
Read MoreIn coaching, one of the most powerful tools is visualisation. Often people find it relatively easy to explain what’s wrong with their current predicament but they struggle to define what good looks like for them. Asking them to visualise their future state and look back at themselves from that viewpoint can help them to see that there are a variety of perfectly attainable other states. But ...
Read MoreI was recently asked to put together a session to coach a group of senior executives to improve their communication skills. They are responsible for cascading important messages throughout their organisation and, it was felt, they could do with some support as often messages landed badly due to the way they were presented. The coaching session I suggested would cover all the main areas from body ...
Read MoreWhen it comes to approaching change there are, it seems, two types: people like us who are forward thinkers, ready to embrace the opportunities of technology, and new ways of working and thinking; and them, who are happy with the way things are and perpetually stuck in old-fashioned ways. Joking aside, it is a topsy-turvy world where Conservative politicians boast of their radical agenda whilst tra...
Read MoreFor those of us brought up in an era of three TV channels and the test card, the iPlayer is a marvellous innovation. It provides high quality content for use on multiple platforms so that the consumer can choose where, when and how they watch and listen. It is a service of which the BBC can be justly proud. It is, however, as likely to sink the corporation as it is to be its saviour. This i...
Read MoreThree recent news stories have raised questions about the nature of work. Firstly, there is the transatlantic spat between the US tyre company CEO who is declining to take over a Goodyear factory in Northern France because the “so-called workers” only worked three hours a day, spending the rest of the time eating and talking. Then there were reports of a survey which found that one in three p...
Read MoreIt is extraordinary how so many things in life seem to be either black or white. Despite the complexity of modern society many seemingly want to view every social, environmental, moral, and economic issue as either being from one political standpoint or another. Parties of the centre, and those who proudly nail their colours firmly to the fence, are cursed with being neither one thing nor the oth...
Read MoreSize, as they say, isn’t everything. Almost 50 years after the publication of Schumacher’s seminal work Small is Beautiful the debate about appropriate size is beginning to take root. Actually, as with many debates about size, that statement is itself a bit of an exaggeration. In reality, the current debate is more about whether capitalism has erred in allowing banks, and other insti...
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