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

  • 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 as I got to talk not about tech and social media – but of leadership Read more

  • We need less talk about innovation and more about mediocrity

      “The only way to get mediocre is one step at a time. But you don’t have to settle. It’s a choice you get to make every day.” – Seth Godin In my last post I named innovation as the most overused word of 2014. It’s consistently misapplied to things that really aren’t innovative at Read more

  • 20 Signs You’re Probably Not Working For A Social Business 

    If innovation is the most overused word of 2014 , then “social business” must be the most misappropriated term. Every other organisation I come across is claiming to be one. But what does it mean to be a social business? Altimeter Group defines it as: “The deep integration of social media and social methodologies into the Read more

  • Managers are waste: Five organisations saying goodbye to the boss

    “Until there is a monumental shift in the leadership dynamic from the old fashioned command and control to a collaborative, status free, matrix way of working, then the debate about the need for an office (in the traditional sense) will be a long one.”  – Tracey Johnson commenting on Why The Death Of The Office Read more

  • Robot Revolution: Our disappearing jobs and the future of work

    “Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries that all these new mechanical muscles will make horses unnecessary. The other reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier. Remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Remember riding into battle? All terrible. These city Read more

  • Why The Death Of The Office Can’t Come Too Soon

    “We literally followed people around all day and timed every event [that happened in the office], to the second. That meant telephone calls, working on documents, typing e-mails, or interacting with someone. What we found is that the average amount of time that people spent on any single event before being interrupted was about three minutes.” – Gloria Read more