Paul Taylor

Latest Writing

  • 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

  • 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 the year we went social. The year the UK housing sector embraced new technologies embarking Read more

  • 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. The temptation with social is to spread yourself across every available platform – and I Read more

  • 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 been asked about setting it up more than anything else I’ve done in my career, Read more

  • 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 people in the workplace, supporting families, friends, neighbours and society. We also need to radically Read more

  • 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 is about our lives: it’s dramatic, it makes a difference to the way we live Read more

  • 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 device where no one will see it), that defines its products in the marketplace.   Read more