The Rest is Work

Why many problems at work and in organisations are caused by the absence of a purpose shared by all of its directors.

The impact of your formative years #MostMondays

How to win at interview #MostMondays

#MostMondays: how to feel fulfilled at work most of the time whether you lead or follow

How to tell someone they must leave #MostMondays - how to feel fulfilled at work most of the time whether you lead or follow

How to facilitate your own off-site #MostMondays - how to feel fulfilled at work most of the time, whether you lead or follow

Fantasy letter to a Chair from a board evaluator: Dear Chair, While I’m sure you will find a way of asserting in next year’s annual report, as you did last year, that your Board complies with FRC/QCA/Wates codes and principles I feel I should draw your attention to the following seven statements by members of your board made during the course of my evaluation:

In an ideal world, boards should focus on fixing the matters arising from their board evaluations. They don’t because the purpose of board evaluations of many boards, despite pleas by regulators, is to tick boxes for annual reports and/or to use them as sticks to beat colleagues. Even organisations who pride themselves on carrying out rigorous board evaluations including on behaviour issues can mi...

My Mum is 90 today. She was born on 22nd September 1930. The Irish Times that day reported widespread gales, a tramcar accident in Dublin and the activities of a man called Hitler. Mum was nine at the outbreak of World War II, a teenager at a boarding school in the forties, married in the early fifties and had seven children by the early sixties of which I was the sixth. She ran two small business...

Imagine if the UK were a Plc and the Prime Minister its Group CEO then I would, this week, be pitching to him my facilitated virtual off-site program, which I piloted successfully during lockdown with a financial services client: Dear Prime Minister, UK Plc currently lacks a shared purpose (P), a shared strategy (S) to achieve that purpose and an agreed behaviour (B) plan to implement its strategy...

Last week a client told me that people desperately need support returning to work. They usually use the summer to refresh, she said, but were instead preparing kids for school/university which will be entirely new and different experiences; deciding to home-school or not; parents of children with special needs are especially struggling; there’s a constant anxiety about job losses or loss of collea...

How are things? Are you having a good pandemic, "actually"? Was lockdown "great, in a way"? Did you get in touch with your inner sourdough, learn your kids' names and zoom "back-to-back"? Is your business "hugely" benefiting from the pandemic, "as it happens"? Sales up, like, who knew? Is "managing growth" your main problem, "frankly"? Or are you waking each day feeling sick about "Q4"? Have you s...

The many tributes to John Hume's life in all media over the last week all confirm that he achieved what many CEOs talk about in terms of toe-curling tautology but rarely deliver: "transformational change". It's as if, as Sandy Toksvig once quipped, "there's no change in ordinary change". 

Yesterday, Paul Gilbert, CEO LBCWisecounsel, UK’s doyen of commentary and advice to and on in-house lawyers wrote an important blog which, I suspect will have been read by many lawyers but not so many “COVID-19 CEOs” - that is CEOs waking up this morning faced with the task of leading their organisations through an unprecedented global pandemic. Paul’s blog concerned a conversation he had last Fri...

Sir Keir Starmer recently completed his first hundred days as Leader of the Opposition in the UK's Parliament. Commentators have assessed these according to their political bias. But none disagree on his chief achievement: his "forensic" approach to "calling out" the government on its behaviour. CEOs can learn much from his approach. Keir Starmer is a barrister and, as Nigel Pascoe QC explained in...

During lockdown, I started reading - or more accurately listening on Scribd on my run - to David Herbert Donald's biography of Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln . In Chapter 16, he describes Lincoln's fury at General Meade's failure to prevent General Lee's escape into Virginia. Frustration fuelled the President's anger. Modern CEOs and leaders will recognise these deeper feelings if they take time to paus...

"...I fear that the "emerging from the crisis" industry will result in leaders repeating the errors made during the 2008 Global Financial Crash after which they pathologised "their people" and introduced a raft of downwards focused "reforms" to "fix them" without pausing first to look at themselves in the leadership mirror".

Everyone is talking about post-COVID. This is wishful thinking. There will be no post-COVID. Ever. Vaccine or no vaccine. As one client put it: it will be forever "cum-COVID", not post. We will live with this pandemic and its impact for the foreseeable future. As after World War II, nothing will be the same again. Only worse. At least during that war the foe was in plain sight and the pubs were op...

On the morning of June 11th. 2020 The Centre for Ethics and Law, University College London, published a report written by Professor Stephen Mayson with the title: "REFORMING LEGAL SERVICES - REGULATION BEYOND THE ECHO CHAMBERS - FINAL REPORT of the Independent Review of Legal Services Regulation". This Report almost certainly did not form part of the bedtime reading of most CEOs, board members and...

Feelings of shame, hurt & anger, to name just three, were merely business as usual ("BAU") at and after pre-COVID meetings at which people were physically present...

Last week I worked with a CEO who leads a rapid growth multi-site retail business trying to figure out how to "re-launch" after his employees come back "from furlough". If you are in a similar situation, I propose: 7-step COVID-19 business plan process   Step 1: Bin all previous plans Don't be tempted to re-forecast the current financial year's P&L in the light of COVID-19 using your pre-...

You are the CEO because you are demanding on yourself and others. When the going gets tough, the tough become bloody unreasonable. Don't. The novelty of lockdown has long worn off. It's now a grind; an economic nightmare looms; the possibility of a second wave, real. The divorce pains of Brexit, whether you voted for it or not, unavoidable. The early days of Zoom awkwardness are a distant memory;...

Let’s say, for the sake of argument and I know there are some flaws in the analogy, that Mr Johnson is the equivalent of a COVID CEO and Mr Cummings the equivalent of a COVID COO in business. In normal times the CEO/COO relationship is tricky. In times of pandemic, it's positively problematic. COVID-19 CEOs and COOs are like no other CXOs, whether they like it r not. At the risk of teaching granny...

Simon Sinek is unlikely to shout out "Start with the FRC Code". You won't find a Ted Talk titled "FRC - The Cool Code out of COVID City. Nor will #CorpGov be trending any time soon. J A Sutherland writing in his book Ensuring General Wisdom: The critical role non-executive directors and trustees play in executive performanc e says "No-one leaps out of bed in the morning, breathes deeply and cries:...