Latest Posts

  • 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

  • It’s our job to give customers a story to tell, not tell it for them…

    “Guinness is lovely but it will always be the same, a (delicious) black and white drink – simple and unchanging. Subway do nice sandwiches. Lego make little bricks. The work of housing associations, councils, the NHS and other government departments… Continue reading

  • Lessons in Customer Experience from Apple

    Apple has a clearly defined mission of creating products that are “insanely great.”   Simply stating that ambition achieves little.  It is Apple’s commitment to its values, such as integrated architecture and clean design (even on the inside of the… Continue reading

  • How your culture can promote innovation

    “Organisational culture is the sum of values and rituals, which serve as ‘glue’ to integrate the members of the organisation.” – Richard Perrin I spent a wonderful day in Belfast this week with a group of Housing Organisations. It was refreshing… Continue reading