If someone asked you, “What is your job?”, what would your response be? Go ahead, take a minute to think about your answer. I asked a similar question a few weeks ago in my post Become Indispensable: Solve Interesting Problems) Professor Fred Kofman tells a story about a question that changed his outlook on this … Read more
As I grow ever older, staying fit requires ever greater intention. I sometimes wish to myself that it might be a little easier, but then quickly realise that this is my inner saboteur distracting me. If you are going uphill then you are going towards success. I so often want writing to become easier. I … Read more
These are the top 12 posts on Moving People to Action based on number of readers: Rank Title Views 1 Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint” 121,993 2 Three Examples of Ice-Breaker Speeches 14,496 3 17 Daily personal habits for a fulfilling life 8,367 4 “Be water, my friend” Bruce Lee 6,809 5 Geert Hofstede: the 6 Dimensions of National Culture … Read more
In the spirit of changing myself for the better (and becoming a better father to my daughter), I wrote a short manifesto. http://cono.rs/idontknow In the next 10 years through to 2024, 1 Billion jobs will be taken over by machines. Google cars will replace taxis. IBM’s Watson will replace customer service staff. We cannot out-reason the machines. We must … Read more
How do you respond when a person says “Tell me about yourself?” It might be called confidence, it might be called belief – do you let others see the best version of you, or do they see a dull, low-intensity, passionless version of yourself? Why do we find it difficult to sell ourselves? I spent … Read more
“If you know the name of a bird in all of the human languages, you will still know absolutely nothing about the bird. My father taught me the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing about that something.” Richard Feynman Earlier this week, my father sent me 2 short video interviews of Nobel … Read more
A few weeks ago I was in the audience with my friend Manuel listening to Kilian Jornet share his life story. At the age of 26, Kilian projects the profound wisdom of a Zen sage. The mountains are a powerful teacher. Kilian will run up and down Everest in 2015. Yep, run up it. He … Read more
Last week I taught a course on persuasive communication. One individual was a charismatic speaker who repeatedly gave speeches that I would classify as “Rant”. This is a passionate and initially engaging way of speaking, but it has no place in a Leader’s communication. To rant is to speak or shout at length in an … Read more
I heard this question asked to a full conference room recently: “Do you know how to use the internet?” All hands went up. Everybody in the room felt that yes, they know how to use the internet. Then, the speaker asked a second question: “Ok, show me what you have created?” “Show me what you … Read more
This week I was teaching a 2 day course on Personal and Organisational Leadership. Stefan flew in on Monday to organise the logistics for the course. I met him at the Hilton Diagonal Mar hotel to take him for dinner at my favourite tapas restaurant in Barcelona: Cerveceria Catalana. We jumped in my car and … Read more