-
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 could so easily be me’. We all know what it is to have so perfectly conceived of an idea, a flawless, shining star in our imagination. The perfect cake, the perfect holiday, the perfect relationship, the perfect presentation, the perfect business strategy. And we all know what it feels like,…
-
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 that I have loved and have worked very hard at. In leaving, I’m going to be leaving a whole heap of things undone, and of the many things that are hard about this transition season, it’s perhaps this that I have wrestled with most. I would like to have somehow…
-
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 out of adrenalin and crisis mode, some numbness is wearing off, and the reckoning of all that we’ve been through is beginning. I speak to leaders who feel that they are too thinly spread, and have been for a long time. They have violated so many of their own boundaries…
