“Those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.”
Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

There are two types of business leaders: Those who find themselves in a position of leadership because of genuine aptitude, and those who get there via political manipulations, stepping on others, and bullying.

The former would be surrounded by real loyalty, achieving consistent outcomes, and probably in …

“Lost in the rush towards technical innovation are the human dimensions of the relationship between people.”

On Being a therapist, Kottler J A, 1993

A friend told me about an appalling “service” perpetrated by one of our local big telcos today.

Imagine this: The day’s finally finished. You have just arrived home with the kids in tow. There’s dinner to sort out, the cat to feed, and the family to settle. Suddenly, there is a knock on the door. A strange man wants to be let in. He is from your friendly telephone …

I am a big believer in businesses working with our humanity, as opposed to trying to suppress, pervert or “manage” it.

I realised today that business-as-usual have been doing a version of this. They tap in to our fears and our greed, both of which are very real human traits.

Food companies appeal to our hardwired love for salty, fatty and sugary foods. All too many businesses tap into our …

This is a (crappy) photo of the buttons panel of a lift I have been using 4 times a week for almost 8 weeks now. (More legible diagrams below). Every time I use it, I always had to pause to consciously find the floor number I wanted. This struck me as most odd. So here’s an attempt to understand why this is so.

A lift’s …

The recent terrorist attacks in the UK made me think of my post on principles vs rules.

The individuals in each terrorist cell are driven by clear principles. They act on these principles the best way they know how, using whatever method or approach that works. Often these are ways most likely to succeed in the local environment because of their local knowledge, and their high adaptability unconstrained …

I was watching this digger at work whilst waiting for the train one day. Its movements were intriguing – digging, scraping, lifting, scooping, and levelling piles of rubble. As it switched tasks, it was deftly swapping its scoop attachment for others. To reposition itself in a tight corner, where its turning circle was too large, it even used its arm as a crutch to manoeuvre …

Company structures may well still be based on the factory model. But the cogs of the machine, the workers, are no longer the illiterate and externally-motivated unwashed. In fact, most knowledge workers these days do wash!

It is no longer sufficient to blindly follow last century’s “best-practices” when it comes to “managing” knowledge workers. New processes, tools and strategies founded on the basis of respect and collaboration are the …

This is something I sketched up a couple of weeks ago:

Our subconscious determines our very first and immediate reaction to a given stimuli. This generates raw feelings. We cannot help but react at this level to the stimuli. Once we are aware of the stimuli, and note our immediate reaction; we then have conscious choice over how we respond to the stimuli emotionally and rationally. …