Latest Posts

  • It’s Time for Us to Unleash the Hidden Power in Communities

    “It’s so tempting for those of us who provide services….support workers, housing providers, social workers, community workers, health visitors, GPs…to see ourselves as the ones with the gifts. The ones with the solutions. The superheroes ready to fly in and… Continue reading

  • Best Practice, Benchmarking and the Race to Mediocrity

    We must be different. We must be lopsided. No more herdlike regression toward the mean – we must find the things at which we’re great, and build on those – Tim Kastelle A few years ago my organisation adopted a new way of… Continue reading

  • The End of Trust (and how organisations can rebuild it)

    We’ve seen an alarming evaporation of trust across all institutions, reaching the lows of the recession in 2009. Trust in government, business, media and non-profits is below 50% in two-thirds of countries, including the U.S, U.K, Germany and Japan. There has… Continue reading

  • Six Ways To Kill Email

    Every week more and more organisations are waking up to the tyranny of email, and the part it is playing in the impending death of the office. We spend hours each week , up to four years of our lives,… Continue reading

  • How To Get Better At Failing

    “Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before.” Neil Gaiman Just before Christmas – in my final catch up of the year with my manager  – a pretty significant thing happened. I was told that… Continue reading

  • We need more people solving problems – not professionals.

    Everyone has a story to tell, everyone has strengths beneath the conceptions that you have of them. But if you’re curious enough, you may just find that the answers you’ve always been looking for are there, often right beside you. –… Continue reading

  • 2015: The year we put the social back into housing 

    You can have super star status online without any official status offline; you can be a powerful chief executive offline with very little impact online – Victoria Betton  Just over two years ago I pronounced rather grandly that 2012 was… Continue reading

  • My Five Most Popular Posts of 2014

    It’s the time of year to reflect on the past 12 months and consider where next – personally and professionally.  To that we also need to add our online profiles and give consideration to how we spend our digital time.… Continue reading

  • 10 things we learned from launching an Innovation Lab

    “If you are going to take an innovation job, make sure to buy yourself some time, and then, use that time to make sure you make a difference.”  Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg It’s now over six months since we launched Bromford Lab. I’ve… Continue reading

  • A Revolution in Care Requires a Revolution in Thinking

    It would appear that a revolution is required in our thinking of older people as a ‘demographic time bomb’, ‘burden’, ‘bed blockers’ and an economic liability all of which engender ageist attitudes. We’ need to recognise the contribution of older… Continue reading