I've developed a new approach to finding new books to read. In one of my more progressive acts of parenting, I tend to take the boys to the local library once a week. Whilst there, I'm also looking out for something to pick up myself. No longer am I relying on Amazon recommendations - I'm … Continue reading Inside the box
Category: Other Stuff
In Dan Pink's wonderful book To sell is human there is a chapter that describes six ways to pitch an idea, a product or even yourself. The one that I found most interesting was what he called the Subject Line Pitch. Imagine the best email subject line in the world, and Pink argues it will contain three … Continue reading The one thing that all LinkedIn all-time top ten posts have in common
About four years ago I decided to take my career on a new path. I had spent much of the preceding two decades working in IT of one form or another, but needed to change. In my early thirties I'd set myself the goal of becoming a CIO by the age of 40. When I was … Continue reading Career planning
Today marks the 101st anniversary of my grandfather's birth. It also marks the end of the first year of my foray into the world of entreprenuerism. A year down, and it has to be said that it's been hard. I was utterly over optimistic about how and where clients would come from, and although I am … Continue reading Bertie Day
I don't often get to listen to the "Thought for the Day" slot on Radio 4's Today Programme - and I tend to mentally switch off if I do because I'm irked by the idea that only the religious can display morality that seems to underpin the whole shebang. However one did catch my ear late … Continue reading Mixed virtues
Back in the middle of the last decade I spent a couple of years working in management training. It was a remarkable time for my learning, even though I was supposed to be there for the learning of others. Each month our performance would be assessed on the basis of the "happy sheets" - the … Continue reading Five ways to rig your speaker feedback scores
Another topic that was getting much coverage at last week's Spark the Change conference was that of failing, failure and the ability to learn from getting things wrong. As I wrote a few weeks ago I wonder if a substantial part of the problem which faces organisations in allowing people to do things that don't work … Continue reading Failure, disproof, and unholy f-ups
Here's an interesting little connection for you... Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google, both went through Montessori education. The Montessori method has, at its core, a belief that children are natural learners and that learning therefore should be more child- rather than knowledge-centric than traditional approaches. Google appears to want to make rote … Continue reading Book review: Curious
There is a school of scientific thought prevalent in psychology and behavioural economics that sees fact emerging from rigorous, controlled experimentation. As a result much of what we understand about the way in which we think is derived from the observation of undergraduates performing laboratory tasks. Whilst there is much that can be learned from … Continue reading Book review: Seeing what others don’t
I'm presenting tomorrow morning to an audience of which I've been advised that one of the main people "doesn't like Powerpoint". The theme of the presentation is disruption. In a spirit of self-disruption I've decided to present without slides. I might do an odd bit of the old flip chart, but no pictures. I don't regard myself … Continue reading Flying without slides…
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