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Lessons from a Friend
In the middle of November, on a gentle grey day, just as the old year was starting to tire and fray, one of my dearest friends, Gregor Grant, died. In the long weeks since, there have been bouquets of words thrown down by the many people who loved him, lavishing praise on a wonderful artist, musician, lawyer and, above all,…
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Great, make one!
You know those pictures that circulate online of baking disasters? One went viral just recently, showing a horse cake that someone had made to mark the Queen’s funeral. Those pictures always make me sort of laugh-gasp-sob. I think perhaps grip us in the same way that true crime grips us; namely, with that vertiginous sense of ‘oh my goodness, that…
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This Ramshackle House
I talk a lot about what it takes on a personal level to be a good and resourceful leader. About the disciplines and practices that we should pay attention to and build for ourselves to ensure that we remain resourceful and healthy – the importance of rest and sleep and rejuvenation, of reflective practices, of eating well and exercising. Blah…
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What I read on my holidays
When I was a kid, my nickname in my family was Johnny Number 5, after the robot in the 1988 movie Short Circuit who could read a book in seconds. My earliest memories are of the revolving door, beeswaxed floor and orange plastic chairs of my local library. My idea of the best possible day out was when I could persuade my dad…
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China in your hand – five lessons in gratitude
'Don't push too far your dreams are china in your hand....' sang Carol Decker of T'Pau in 1987, and I've been pushing to far ever since. But this year a very different sort of china in my hand has deepened my gratitude practice and helped me to understand how a bit of grounding in the present is exactly what our…
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Business writing, Humanising business, Leadership, Organisational change, Personal Reflections, Storytelling
Did you imagine it would be this way forever?
I’ve confessed before that for someone who is making a career out of helping organisations to change, I don’t half make heavy weather of it sometimes in my own life. I love the present hard, while taxing it with all my anxiety around the future to come. I’m like my littlest boy who loves holidays so much that he starts…
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Sometimes I don’t even know the question
We all know the experience of being around someone who doesn’t ask any questions. In some social circumstances, it can be an introvert’s dream scenario – I have lost count of the number of drinks parties, dinners, wedding receptions I’ve been to where I’ve been able to hide in plain sight – just ask a couple of questions of the…
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Business writing, Confidence, Humanising business, Leadership, Personal Reflections, Purpose, Uncategorised
Leaving things half done
Where I grew up, you worked hard. You cleared your plate. A hard day was a good day. Sick days were for wimps, lay-ins for layabouts. If you were banging your head against a brick wall and it wasn’t working, you just needed to bang a wee bit harder, a wee bit longer. I am about to leave a job…
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Business writing, Humanising business, Leadership, Organisational change, Personal Reflections, Uncategorised
Rethinking Energy
Of all of the themes in the book that I’ve had cause to think longest and hardest about this past year, it’s the theme of energy.Everywhere I turn, I encounter leaders who are overwhelmed and exhausted. In the UK at least, this seems even more acute as things start to feel objectively a little better – I suspect because we’re…
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Rethinking Simplicity
Blue anemones in a glass vase. A clear diary. A perfect story. A clear decision made. Do you find yourself craving simplicity in what feels like an airless and cluttered world? Does your brain feel foggy? This week's blog is a cri de coeur for simplicity. Simplicity of message, simplicity of information, simplicity in structure, in decision-making, and in getting…
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Rethinking Understanding
Almost all of us have surely, over the past year, been sucked into the impossible game of ‘pandemic trumps’. Whose wifi is worst? Whose pet the most disruptive? Is it better to be locked down in the city or in the countryside? Alone or with small children? Who has looked enviously while perched on the end of their bed with…
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Agility, Business writing, Humanising business, Leadership, Organisational change, Personal Reflections, Purpose, Storytelling
Rethinking Agility
My fifteen year old son is a goalkeeper. During lockdown, his training has been via zoom calls and has involved setting up ludicrous obstacle courses across the living room, so that he can practise changing direction in a fraction of a second, or leaping from a standing start onto a high box. He is working on his agility – the…
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Business writing, Confidence, Humanising business, Leadership, Organisational change, Personal Reflections, Purpose, Storytelling, Women
Rethinking Confidence
Some days I don’t have the first idea what I’m doing. I eat cake for breakfast and shout at the children, and my hair looks crap. Some days I look at the length of my to do list, the unanswered emails, the state of my kitchen, and realise I am profoundly unqualified for the role of Living My Own Life....
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Business writing, Humanising business, Leadership, Organisational change, Personal Reflections, Purpose, Storytelling
Rethinking Evolution
I have two daughters, aged 12 and 10, who like to define themselves as pretty much polar opposites of each other (though in truth, they are perhaps more similar than either of them cares to admit.) One of the differences between them is that one loves to bake, and the other loves to cook. Baking Daughter loves to flick through…
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Business writing, Humanising business, Leadership, Organisational change, Personal Reflections, Purpose, Storytelling
Rethinking Belonging
For the first time in my life, I saw the truth … that Love, Meaning and Connection are the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire –Viktor Frankl The first big theme that my book focuses on as a source of both risk and opportunity during change is the idea of Belonging. The chapter in my book that…
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Business writing, Humanising business, Leadership, Organisational change, Personal Reflections, Purpose
An island in an ocean full of change
There’s a George Ezra song, Pretty Shining People, that was released in March 2019, the same month my book was published, and, of course, several months before we had even heard of Covid 19. In the song, Ezra has his character sing: Man, help me out. I fear I’m on an island on an ocean full of change.Can’t bring myself…
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Ordinary Gorgons
A personal reflection on two women from my past who inspire my future for IWD 2020 At Arup, one of the things we’ve been doing to mark International Women’s Day this year is to share our stories of women who have inspired us. The stories people have shared are exciting and inspiring – groundbreaking engineers, pioneering academics, incredible designers, challenging authors, brilliant…
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Finding My Voice On The Page As a Female Business Author
I finally found my loud, clear voice as a female leader in the summer of 2018, when I was all alone in a tiny holiday cottage on a remote bluff in Cornwall, watching the rain lashing its way along the coast.
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Purpose over Process: How Your Gantt Chart Causes Damage During Periods of Change
Change is coming, everyone in your organisation can feel it and there’s a general undercurrent of unease. We are not creatures who like uncertainty. We’re programmed such that our brains feel better when we can see patterns and predict the future. We like to sense-make.
