12 Vital Questions for Any New Business

Global Entrepreneurship Week It is Global Entrepreneurship Week on 18 November through 23 November.  There are events all over the world.  The overall organisation website is: http://www.unleashingideas.org. You can find out more following twitter hashtags #GEW, #GEWSpain, #IESEGEW.  There will be plenty of events in your city led by Entrepreneurs’ Organisation, The Kauffman Foundation and many more … Read more

Become Indispensable: Solve Interesting Problems

Question for you: What do you have as your description line in your LinkedIn profile? Mine says “Moving People to Action”   What does your LinkedIn Description say? I see several varieties of description.  Some people just put their job title: “VP Marketing at Corporation Inc”.  Some people an abstraction of their past experience “Experienced … Read more

“Miracle”: Doesn’t Mean it Doesn’t Work

Miracle doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, it means we don’t understand how it works. There are plenty of things I don’t understand, but I know they work. Plant a seed, grow a tree.  I don’t understand all that happens in the growing of a tree, but I do know that planting an acorn, watering and … Read more

Leading Teams: The 5 Styles of Managing People

I was teaching a seminar recently and a young film producer told me “I am not a good manager”.  I asked him why he believed this.  He described a recent series of disasters that he had overseen with his team. I asked him “who are the people on your team?”. He said his cousin helped … Read more

Knowingly Bad

You can’t begin to improve at something until you are “knowingly bad”. If you are not aware of the lack of something, you haven’t got “taste” yet.  If you think you are the best blogger in the world, two things could be true: You really are the best blogger in the world You are blind … Read more

What is art for?

In 2001 I spent a weekend in Denmark with 3 friends. We spent Sunday morning in the sunshine visiting the Louisiana modern art museum 40 kms north of Copenhagen. The setting was beautiful, right on the coast with views over the water to Sweden. One of my friends said “this place is beautiful, its a … Read more

Does success inevitably breed failure?

When does the switch from aiming to succeed to aiming not to fail occur? Has any company ever avoided it? NASA, Microsoft… and next up?  Apple? Dan Ariely asks this question on his blog. Why did NASA go from the ambitious 1960’s to 1980’s era moon missions to the conservative, blame-finding, cover-your-arse culture of the … Read more

70% of Organisational Change Efforts Fail. 8 Steps for Leading Change.

70% of organisation change efforts fail. John Kotter has an 8 step process that can reduce the likelihood that your project of organisational change (and all leadership projects mean some form of change the the existing status quo). A big source of failure is starting action before you have put together a solid base of … Read more