What Do We Remember?
‘…a war begun for no purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and…
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Are You Listening Or Just Letting Me Speak?
‘The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place’ George Bernard Shaw We know that good communication depends in good measure on listening but we mostly spend too little time thinking about what that really means. Listening is usually passive, in the sense that it…
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Crisis Leadership – Beyond Pants & Pencils
“This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you’ve got a moment, it’s a twelve-storey crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpeting throughout, 24-hour portage, and an enormous sign on the roof, saying ‘This Is a Large Crisis’. A large crisis requires a large plan. Get me two…
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I Promise I Can Make You Smile – Leadership & Belief (Part 2)
‘Beliefs are a special category of information that fundamentally shape our expectations, behaviour & performance’. Have you ever been in a race and had a feeling of complete exhaustion and wondered how you were ever going to keep going when the finish seemed so far away? Only to find yourself…
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Leadership & Belief (Part 1)
Boy on a high dive, Norman Rockwell, 1947 ‘Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right’. – Henry Ford My wife should probably have been a vet. As a child it was what she had her heart set on and knowing her as I…
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Women Special Forces & The Case For Diversity
A crisis can generate a focus on what really matters. We set aside petty and irrelevant concerns, discard turf wars, prejudice and office politics in the overwhelming concern to save the ship from sinking. Almost exactly 81-years ago, in July 1940, Britain had already had to evacuate her army…
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When to Press & When to Rest?
I’ve been thinking a lot about growth and repair recently. Partly as I recently fell out of a tree and broke my wrist and am now at the start of the rehab and partly as I am talking to a number of teams and organisations whose primary feeling is exhaustion.…
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