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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 to dive in to an ocean full of change.Am I losing touch?Am I losing touch now? And then, in the lyrics, his friend Sam replies: Why, why, what a terrible time to be aliveif you’re prone to overthinking …. As earworms go, it’s catchy, and as a pithy statement of…
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Herrings and peanuts
My year of huge change and what it has taught me – part three of a reflection in three parts. In this final part of a three part blog reflecting on my year of transition as a leader, I’d like to focus on understanding. Together with belonging and confidence, which I focused on in previous parts, understanding has proven to be one of the striking components of my BECAUSE model when applied to my own experience. In the chapter on Understanding in my book, I describe navigating my way around a Danish supermarket trying to buy what I need … The simultaneous delight and slightly terrified lostness that comes from…
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Beautiful and Terrible Things
My year of huge change and what it has taught me – part two of a reflection in three parts. In part one of this blog on my first year in a new role, I reflected on the importance of belonging and how to establish it during leadership transition. If belonging was one of the big themes I rumbled with last year, then confidence was the other. In a sense they’re two sides of the same coin; two different ways of exploring the relationship between the firm and the individual as a leader. Belonging starts with the firm, and is about what I could do as an individual and a…
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Taking my own medicine
My year of huge change and what it has taught me – a reflection in three parts Back in the spring, just after the clocks had changed, when the days were warming and stretching and I was living on something other than mince pies and leftover cheese, back when Brexit first didn’t happen, I published my first book. It’s a book that extols the virtues of change. It allows that change is hard. It includes full disclosure that I don’t have a great personal track record in this area – always in love with my present reality, and imagining every conceivable monster in the future. But overall, the book’s central…
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How’s business?
One of the questions that I most hated when each of my children was very little was, “Is (s)he a good baby?” Such a sweet and well intentioned question, really meaning something along the lines of, “Are you alright? Or has the arrival of this small person so turned your world around that you no longer know which way is up?” It was, I think now, really just a way of letting me know I was seen, that the boundaries of me hadn’t dissolved completely in the fog of milk and sleeplessness that so marks this period. But I never knew how to answer it. I didn’t have a baseline…
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I do, we do, you do, review …
Do you? Review? I never used to. You are inundated with requests, am I right? An email from Open Table: ‘How was Enoteca St Paul’s?’ Erm, fine thanks, I’d have said if it wasn’t, and besides, it was yesterday – already just a glimpse of a memory in the bottom of a dark stairwell. Swipe left and delete. A notification from Uber: ‘Thanks for riding with Estefan. Please rate your trip. Please leave a tip. Please pay Estefan a compliment.’ Swipe up and ignore. An email from Amazon Marketplace: “Jenni Emery, did White Marshmallows Bulk Buy – 1 kg bag meet your expectations?” Nnnnggg – perhaps I’ll reply when my mouth isn’t…
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Business writing, Humanising business, Leadership, Organisational change, Personal Reflections, Purpose, Storytelling
Two Monsters
When my eldest son was three years old, my brother bought him a book that had been one of his own favourites when he was younger. It’s a book called Two Monsters, by David McKee and it’s about, well, two monsters. The two monsters live on opposite sides of a mountain – one on the east side, and one on the west side. They have never met, but they can speak to each other through a hole in the mountain. One evening, the sky is beautiful, and one monster shouts to the other through the hole, ‘Look! Isn’t it beautiful! Day is departing.’ ‘Day departing?’ replies the other monster? ‘You…
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The Tough Question
In the few weeks since the publication of my book, I have been asked two questions in particular over and over again– a fun one, and a tough one. The fun question is about why I wrote the book in the first place; perhaps that’s an article for another day. The tough one is the one I particularly want to tackle now, and the answer – or at least an attempt at one – is in a sense a companion to last week ‘s piece about how to keep people engaged in times of uncertainty. The tough question is, in a nutshell, “Okay, all this stuff about authentic leadership and…
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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.
