Lego and an exercise in productivity (and a giveaway)
I did some work with Lego in the past. In meeting rooms, they had bowls of bricks, and everyone was encouraged to play with them throughout (the team claimed it encouraged more creative thinking). This memory has always stuck with me, and yet I’ve never returned to it with much…
Returning to the office will be hard. Here’s how you can make it easier…
A nice little article I read on Harvard Business Review by Constance Dierickx and Dorie Clark. As many leaders begin encouraging more time in the office for their teams – there are a number of ways to make sure you’re supporting the transition. Leaders and managers tend to think of employees in…
This is the moment you make your worst decisions
Things are taking longer to get done. Bl**dy remote working! This is what a very capable agency owner said to me recently. To expand: “It’s taking longer to get things done. Nothing is as easy as it was. Remote working just makes life difficult. I know people want flexibility, but…
The financial year does not exist
This article is a simple reminder about the artificial and arbitrary deadlines we all set ourselves as business leaders and founders. This musing came about following a regular catch up with one of my clients. This client had – it’s fair to say – had an absolute belter of a year…
Tips on leadership from an ‘accidental leader’
There is so much to be said for being completely authentic. Being honest about your successes and your failures (and the feelings associated with both those things) is so incredibly important for building connections. It is perhaps the single most wonderful thing as a coach and non-exec when I get…
Inspiration (A Poem)
We all have ideas. Ideas are immortal. They last forever. What doesn’t last forever is inspiration. Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date. If you want to do something, you’ve got to do it now. You can’t put it on the shelf and wait two…
The hazards of a ‘nice’ company culture
I’ve touched on ‘niceness’ before in my Rambling On articles, but I recently read a great article from Timothy Clark for Harvard Business Review which condensed the hazards of a ‘nice’ company culture into the problem, the reason and the cure into one. Well worth reading if you’re concerned your…
Always be closing.
An old age adage indeed. And yet this very advice is as relevant now as ever before. No one is asking you to promote pushy, aggressive sales tactics, but ‘always be closing’ (applied with a lot of emotional intelligence) should, without exception, be at the back of your mind if…
Amy’s Advice to Andy
This week, one of my lead articles got pushed back a week and was replaced by this piece. A gentle but important reminder that you should take a moment to take the foot off the pedal when your energy is low. For the last week or so, I’ve been undertaking…
Grid of emotions – plotting a route to honest conversation
We should all be aware by now of how incredibly powerful clear, simple systems can be. This is never more true that when you’re preparing to spend more than 70 days alone on the Arctic Ocean’s floating pack ice, in pursuit of becoming the youngest person in history to ski…