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Net Zero and The Law of Horse Manure
Catastrophic predictions that spell dark days for humanity are nothing new. The Times predicted in 1894 that in 50 years time, every street in London would be buried under nine feet of horse manure. It was the crisis of all crises. There was, to be fair, some evidence for this. As urban populations rapidly increased… Read more
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The Gravitational Pull Of Business As Usual
The interior secrets of black holes are guarded by a one-way light-trapping boundary called the event horizon. This horizon is the point, according to NASA, that the gravitational influence of the black hole becomes so intense that not even light is fast enough to escape it. A very different horizon exists in many organisations, except… Read more
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When Leaders Talk About Innovation, Always Be Sceptical
Declare yourself an innovation company and celebrate creativity, by all means. Then treat your employees to a little seminar in business history that emphasizes real-life time frames and the numbing necessity of trial and error, trial and error, trial and error. Sir Harold Evans In turbulent times beware the leader touting innovation myths. Myths like:… Read more
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When Everything Is A Crisis, Nothing Is
Who would win in a fight between the housing crisis in one corner and monkeypox in another? We live in a world that now has competing, intersecting, and sometimes conflicting crises. There are the old standards like the climate crisis, and the health crisis (now inflated to a national emergency by Rishi Sunak). The long… Read more
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Do Poor People Waste Money More Than Anyone Else?
Ever since I first started working in social housing, there’s been one trope that’s never really gone away. Poor people waste money. I was only a week into my first job when I was told that tenants kept spending money on satellite TV and we should ‘stop them’ for their own good. I’ve heard it… Read more
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The More We Reduce Conversation, The More We Increase Demand
A few weeks ago I visited a GP surgery with a family member to discuss a few issues that had been bothering them. They were told – with no uncertainty – that they shouldn’t attempt to discuss more than one issue per appointment as they were limited to 10 minutes. It was stated that there… Read more
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How To Make A Paradigm Shift
Last week I was in Amsterdam with the Disruptive Innovators Network (you can read my daily updates, here, here, and here) and it got me thinking about how we make the shift from current behaviours and ways of operating. Travelling across the city you’d think Amsterdam had been designed in a lab rather than being… Read more
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How To Make A Manager Receptive To Your Idea
According to Gallup , only 30% of employees strongly agree that their opinions seem to count at work – and less than 1 in 10 report having the freedom to take risks to improve products and services. Amy Edmondson is correct when she says this a terrible state of affairs – with the dial hardly… Read more
Paul Taylor 