• Net Zero and The Law of Horse Manure

    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

  • The Gravitational Pull Of Business As Usual

    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

  • How Not To Solve The Health, Housing and Care Crisis

    How Not To Solve The Health, Housing and Care Crisis

    Crisis (noun) ‘a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger’. ‘a time when a difficult or important decision must be made.’ The housing crisis can no longer be ignored. Neither it appears can the crisis in health. And nor can the social care, or ageing crisis. Our repeated use of the word crisis is telling and… Read more

  • Don’t Let Busyness Kill Your Creativity

    Don’t Let Busyness Kill Your Creativity

    Last week I was getting a drink when a colleague asked me “So, you busy as usual?” I took a second to avoid my kneejerk affirmative response and went for it: “No – we’ve decided to slow down. Give ourselves some time to really think about things”. They looked at me like I’d lost my… Read more

  • We Need To Promote Outcomes At Work Not Presenteeism

    We Need To Promote Outcomes At Work Not Presenteeism

    “Presenteeism is the biggest threat to UK workplace productivity. Workers coming in and doing nothing is more dangerous than absenteeism” – Professor Cary Cooper A full car park and people appearing busy at their desks is zero evidence that any meaningful work is taking place. UK productivity, our output divided by the hours spent producing… Read more

  • How To Find And Nurture Digital Readiness

    How To Find And Nurture Digital Readiness

    When someone in public service says, ‘I don’t use social media. No one wants to know what I had for breakfast!’ I hear, ‘I don’t have the vaguest interest in understanding how an increasing number of citizens get information or choose to interact.’  – Leah Lockhart What are we doing about boosting the Digital IQ… Read more

  • We Need To Stop Talking About Change Or Get Comfortable With Failure

    We Need To Stop Talking About Change Or Get Comfortable With Failure

    Every year businesses will embark on a series of reports , meetings, visioning sessions , training events and communication strategies. In almost every case the goal will be the same: to make fundamental changes to how business is conducted in order to cope with a new, more challenging environment. 70% of these programmes will fail.… Read more

  • How To Find And Kill Zombie Projects

    How To Find And Kill Zombie Projects

    According to Clayton Christensen , of the 30,000 new consumer products that are launched each year – 95% fail. Compare this with the public, voluntary and non-profit sectors – where hardly anything fails. The social sector must either be fantastic at launching new initiatives, or there’s a lot of things going on that shouldn’t still be living.… Read more