Wise Wednesdays

First: Congratulations   to one of my coaching clients on his recent achievement! Tex Jones whose new company will be featured on   BBC1’s national TV programme Homes Under the Hammer.  He is CEO and Co-Founder of SureRents has just launched a great new service to improve the UK property renting experience and put people at the heart of it. It will be featured He built this from scratch with his co-founders, while balancing a full time job and looking after his family. Check out   http://www.surerents.co.uk/ . His other achievement was to transform his to do list into a new, downsized system that works for him rather than the other way around. Perhaps he’ll agree to do a short interview for a coming Wise Wednesdays so he can share his insights, tips and tricks. Bravo, Tex! NEW WISE WEDNESDAYS SERIES! On changing careers, a new series based on my experience of navigating career change over the years and the evidence on career management for high achieve...

We often talk about what we are prepared to do to make things happen or make a dream come true. We don’t often ask: what are we prepared NOT to do?… By that, I don’t just mean disengaging from time wasting activities but also not replacing time wasting activities with other activities i.e. not replacing one distraction with another. In becoming more efficient and effective in making things happen in your work and life, see if you can identify which category of inaction would serve you best: Category 1 inaction:  Letting go of things that get in the way of the useful action that you want to take. These are what we might call “bad habits” that “waste time”. These include our engagement with things, people, places and our own negative or hypercritical thoughts that drain our energy and willpower. It requires discipline and willpower to break the momentum behind the old habit. Replacing the old habit with a new habit and rewarding yourself for that can help. Catego...

Last week, I was in Paris to give a presentation at Société Générale about modern leadership called “Do Organisations Dream? Transforming Organisations Through Modern Leadership”. My hosts and the participants were just fantastic! If you're curious, below is a short clip of the presentation (I’m speaking in French…) ...and a clip of Amel El Baki who was my main host (alongside Agile Coach Moira Degroote) and me at the Société Générale entrance next to a giant Rugby Ball sculpture (Amel explains its significance…) Do organisations dream? The question behind this is can organisations be used as vehicles for collective leadership to improve society? This is a novel area of research and relates to a number of concepts that assume that we need to evolve as human agents on this planet in order to create a better life for ourselves and others in a manner that is sustainable. These concepts include: The shift from transactional to transformational leadership ...