What I learnt from Charlie

Be here now.  Be.  Here.  Now.  That’s really all there is. A good teacher doesn’t actually have to do much.  A good student will be paying enough attention to learn the next thing they are ready for. Be patient with others.  They’ll get it eventually. Let others know clearly and simply if you don’t want…

The Moral Business

In “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, Big Daddy bellows in exasperation, “Ain’t nothing more powerful than the odour of mendacity.”  Recently diagnosed with cancer and fed up with the secrets and lies of family life, he begins to see that there is nothing lost in airing the truth.  Perhaps many of us when faced…

Drive out fear

Business leaders: when I use the word “culture”, do you screw up your face and say “Love and peace, man”?  I’m no aging hippie; in any case, I was born 10 years too late to be part of that movement.  Business culture is no wiffly-waffly discretionary add-on.  It’s central to effectiveness and business improvement.  I…

Leaders: get out of the way

“Empower” is a word that is coming into greater usage by many who manage people.  I like to think this is a sign of how much the modern manager is acknowledging the importance of authority and accountability being more diffuse in the workplace and that old-style hierarchies have outlived their effectiveness.  I have noticed sometimes,…

Work is not a transaction

In the world of business, it is now almost a given that developing relationship skills are fundamental to success and achievement.  Genuine collaborative relationships are proving more agile and effective at achieving good results than hierarchical ones.  However, much of the business world still operates as if employment was a transaction and not a mutual…

Can I trust you?

A poll in October of 2011 put the approval rating of the US Congress at just 9%.  When Rasmussen pollsters asked Americans if they approved of the US going communist, a full 11% said they were OK with that; two points ahead of Congress.  To put that into context, during Watergate Richard Nixon’s approval rating…