Author Archives:
PLEASING THE BOSS
I was involved recently in a wonderful workshop fronted by Dominic Alldis of musicandmanagement.com
I always welcome workshops like this – people who come in to the business world from music, or theater, or improv, or sculpture, or meditation, or sport, or whatever – who ask those of us immersed in the theory and practice of [...]
THE OPPOSITE OF OVERLOAD
Overloaded, overwhelmed, busy, busy, busy.
The opposite of overload, the cure for being overwhelmed, the solution to too much busyness, is not more effective time management. It is clarity of purpose.
Imagine waking up in the morning. Maybe the snooze alarm has gone off once already and you are in that wonderful state between sleep and waking.
Imagine [...]
Zygmunt Bauman
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman suggests that human beings are the only creatures who know they are going to die. And worse than that, they know they know, and can’t un-know it.
But Bauman challenges us well: to construct a life …
“forgetful of death, life lived as meaningful and worth-living, life alive with purpose instead of being [...]
THE FRENCH TELECOM SUICIDES
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cf3f994-4437-11df-b327-00144feab49a.html
“The culture made me do it”
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A COURSE – PART ONE
Some years ago, I was lucky enough to attend a workshop by Dan Millman – teacher and author of The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Towards the end, he was asked a question by one of the participants:
‘Dan, I leave workshops like this so inspired and full of energy and with the best of intentions [...]
WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?
Richard Holmes, in his book Age of Wonder, describes how the young scientist Humphry Davy hoped to seek a cure for tuberculosis. Looking to improve respiration, he tried inhaling a variety of different gases, eventually making his way to nitrous oxide. Laughing gas.
The nitrous oxide failed to have an impact on the health of his [...]
Three minutes of…?
So I said to my client: “OK I’ve known you all a while now, I’ve been observing how you work together. I’ve heard what you have to say about the past, and what you say you want to create in the future. And I have a suggestion for you. I have an idea, which I [...]
The Real World
I love Columbo movies. I’ve just finished watching one this afternoon, whilst waiting for the Volcano in Iceland to stop reminding us about who really runs things around here…
I love Columbo movies and I love Sherlock Holmes stories. I have all of those in text, all of them as audiobooks and most of them on [...]
THE RESTAURANT REVIEW: the limits of organizational surveys
So here’s the restaurant and here’s the food and here’s the service and in a little while I am going to tell you what I think about them. I am going to give you my opinion. And because I am a well-intentioned person, I am going to give you my best suggestions for what the [...]
The Meaning of Work
One of the consequences of writing about themes such as meaning and purpose at work is that you are reminded to keep questioning your own work’s impact. Because generating a certainty that ‘my work has meaning and serves the world’ has to be balanced every so often with an inquiry into ‘what good does it [...]
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