Category Archives: CURRENT WORK, EXPERIENCES, THOUGHTS…
Are you interested yet?
Days before the completion of my new book, From Making a Living to Creating a Life, The Conference Board published its annual survey into the job satisfaction levels of America’s workforce. They found that, in the year in question (2009), less than one-half of workers in the United States are satisfied with their jobs. This [...]
From Making a Living, to Making a Life
The following is a response to Alain de Botton, on his new blog site theschooloflife.typepad.com/lifeclass/ and in reference largely to his persuasive and beautifully written book, ‘The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work’. FROM MAKING A LIVING TO MAKING A LIFE At school, studying Physics, I learnt that work is defined as the application of effort [...]
All Change is Good
So I introduced myself at a workshop the other day with name, packdrill, the usual stuff “and two strongly held beliefs: (i) that all organisational change is personal change and, (ii) that all change is good”. I went on with my opening spiel, and after a little while a delegate put up his hand. From [...]
Change where you are, when you can
Those of us who refuse to be corralled or mesmerised by aristocratic power use our own strategies of influence and build our own platforms of power to disseminate our stories of educational improvement for social benefit via a systematic knowledge base, and these stories are grounded in the evidence that is generated through practitioners’ studies [...]
Lechyd Da!
The very lovely people of The Eastlake Group invited me to speak at an event for their customers and prospects. Given that they specialise in creating effective working spaces for their clients, they’d had the great idea to hold the event not in a conference centre or hotel meeting room, but in the shell of [...]
In Shanghai
I’ve been in Shanghai, working in a hotel which was, apparently, the home of Shanghai’s Gangster No 2 early last century. Given the photos of him around the walls, holding court with the statesmen, politicians, actors and business people of his day, he was clearly a very popular guy. Or maybe he was very persuasive. [...]
Theatre 3: Existentialists R Us
I’ll add a third reason to CW’s list of reasons all business people should have a substantial theatre experience as part of their development. It’s about the customer. That the customer pays our salaries is the truism that many businesses use to sell the idea that serving the customer well is a good idea. So [...]
Theatre 2: Play works
In the rehearsal room. You should see what happens when grown adults learn to play again. When judgement is let go of, and is replaced by ‘what about?’ and ‘what if?’ and ‘let’s try it, see what happens’.
Theatre 1: Two Huge Lessons for Business?
I’ve been given the great opportunity to work in a theatre again, eighteen years after I last stepped foot in one as a creative participant rather than an audience member. It has been wonderful. On one level, the project was a teambuilding one. Richard Jacobs of Yes asked me to help him out with a [...]
Conversation at Work
My belief is that the great untapped potential of Organisational Development is how people talk to each other: what they say, what they don’t say, and how the nature and quality of their conversations creates the ‘field’ which they then say they ‘experience’. The challenge is that this field is a result of the talking, [...]
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