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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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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Rethinking Belonging
Beautiful and Terrible Things
On Irish radio with Bobby Kerry
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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…
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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…
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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…
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How to Keep Your People Engaged in Times of Uncertainty
We had one of those rare family evenings around the dinner table just recently when the bickering stopped and we had a ‘proper’ conversation. My ten year old daughter asked, apparently apropos of nothing, ‘What’s your favourite feeling?’ We covered joy, laughter, cosiness, relief, gratitude … and then my thirteen year old son alighted on ‘Looking forward to something’. That…
