Wise Wednesdays

I was at an industry conference recently when I heard the strangest thing. [Read on or watch the video.]     https://youtu.be/l5q2FMVA9z4 It was at a session on the financial indicators organisational leaders pay attention to:  "EBITDA, PEM, organic revenue growth and shareholder value".   The speaker was clearly informed as a very experienced management consultant who had the ear of half of the FTSE 100 CEOs. Someone in the audience (not me) asked why leaders didn’t pay more attention to workforce wellbeing (over and above financial indicators). The response was that the economic system doesn’t allow for that, and that current organisational incentives trapped leaders in toxic behaviours… Err, what? Leaders are victims of the system? What are leaders for? I could see his point to some extent. Yes, human behaviour is shaped by the environment. But… …if organisational leaders aren’t responsible for their behaviour and for what happens in th...

We had an interesting monthly webinar playing out difficult communication scenarios.  Here’s the replay  if you missed it and welcome to Wise Wednesdays if you’re new! I was approached by a hedge fund owner this week. He’s experienced the power of coaching and wants to offer it to his fund managers so they can perform at their best. He sees self-care and performance as complementary and I couldn’t agree more. So many corporations are short-sighted and squeeze their staff for short-term gain while losing talent, innovation potential and institutional memory in the long term. [Read on or watch the video]   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJeaut22Jqo I don’t normally work with hedge funds so I looked up the psychology of hedge funds and stumbled upon some research on whether remorseless people (psychopaths) make more money (I also discovered the hedge fund drama Billions)… One  study  looked at people with the dark triad (people who display psychopathy, n...

It’s almost 3 years to the day since the first Wise Wednesdays edition ( Curing cabin fever: 3 strategies ), and that I took a career leap and officially started working as my own boss in my own business. If you’re a recent reader you may have come across Wise Wednesdays because of the edition on work culture ( People don’t leave jobs, they leave toxic work cultures ). Thank you if you helped highlight the message and were one of the half a million+ people who liked, shared or commented on it. Some people have asked how I generated that level of attention. Well, there’s no such thing as an overnight success   3 interdependent reasons: The reach of the internet which can be used skilfully Writing an article every week for the past three years (bar a handful of holidays), pouring my heart and soul into them and learning along the way Willingness to risk ridicule and failure What often holds people back in sharing their ideas (online, in organisation...