Archive
why not celebrate your failures?
It is always great to talk about your successes, But for a few months now I have been writing about projects where have had problems, where we made mistakes, didn’t cover all of the angles, made assumptions or maybe took our eye off the ball types of scenario. Read more…
is every work day being different a good thing?
One thing that is likely to grab my interest on TV, and there isn’t a lot these days, is a fly on the wall style programme. Whilst I accept that these things are carefully edited so as to keep people watching I do enjoy looking behind the scenes. Read more…
does a team need a captain?
I often use sporting analogies in this column as they provide a graphic parallel with life in any organisation; the small group doing their best to compete and overcome the opposition. Even individual sports these days seem to involve a team for we talk about Team Murray with regard to our current tennis hero or take golf where whilst the player plays the shot they seem unable to do so without half an hour of discussion with their caddie beforehand and have trainers, dieticians, psychologists and all sorts waiting in the wings, but I digress. Perhaps my editor needs to be alongside… Read more…
how to handle a wayward genius
They say that genius and madness go hand are close and perhaps events at soccer’s World Cup illustrate this point, but how do you cope in business with someone who is extremely talented, who delivers great things and yet is capable of acts of equally extreme folly? Read more…
make a choice and get off the fence; it isn’t that comfortable up there
One of my regular topics here, but rightly so for being able to make a decision, even a poor one, is beyond so many people and seems to be a greater problem when collective thinking is involved as in the case of an organisation’s management. Read more…
leadership is also about creating the right space
Since I got back from my recent intercontinental travels I have been writing a lot about how things used to be for certain aspects of the places I have been to are in sharp contrast to the way things are here in the UK in 2014. Read more…
good people will always lift your spirits
Telephone calls during the evening are rarely good news; even though it is a while since I was last on a call out list any call after about six in the evening is usually either trouble or some poor soul trying to earn a crust making cold calls. Read more…
A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days
This is a quote from Goethe, and it seems very apt at the moment for my days are anything but ordinary for which I am very grateful. Read more…
You don’t agree? Make my day and tell me
I was probably about 10 when I last did a cartwheel and, as a painfully thin child, I wasn’t too bad at them. To try one now at my current age, heigh and weight would not be a good idea for myself or my surroundings, but last week I was almost tempted to try. The reason for this juvenile excitement was news that someone had disagreed with some of my thinking as expressed in the FM World Diary column. I was delighted, because it is discussion and debate that moves things forward and helps ourselves, our profession and industry move forward. Read more…
build trust from the start by trusting others
Writing last week about some of the old projects my teams and I saw through got me thinking about an aspect of leadership that is pretty fundamental. I’ve written about trust before, but this week I want to look at building that with a new team. Read more…
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the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke 