The Rest is Work

There is anecdotal evidence that some early stage and rapid growth organisations have decided they "no longer need a General Counsel" relying instead on more junior and potentially more biddable in-house lawyers or more arms-length external law firms; that CEOs and senior executives are not inviting in-house lawyers to crucial meetings and finally that some lawyers are pulling back from their usua...

I’m noticing an increase in boardroom tension since lockdown. Boardrooms are always full of human drama but, based on calls I ‘m receiving, and what I hear on the Zoomvine, COVID-19 is bringing way more heat than light into our C-Suites than usual. Roughly speaking, the rows are about three issues: the other person isn’t doing want I want them to do the other person is behaving appallingly towards...

Everyone is talking about the 'new normal" meaning that "things" will never be the same again and we'll have to bally well get used to it. Yet the same commentators talk of recovery and reopening as if it will merely be a case of removing dust sheets and shutters and opening the doors to unchanged customers as if nothing fundamental has changed. It has.

Here we go again – another crisis another “in-word”. After a previous crisis the word ” engagement” which, by the way, was code for you engaging with us , not the other way around – was all the rage. Now it’s “resilience”. You can’t turn a page, scan an online newspaper or website without the R-word screaming at you. And I don’t mean that other R-word, the virus reproduction rate, I mean “resilien...

Andrew Hill at the time of the report observed in the Financial Times: “…What does this report tell us? The same old corporate and political story of how an excess of certitude at the top can lead to catastrophe…If chief executives know little else, they know they have to take decisions… The report advocates wider and deeper discussion in cabinet and committees, separation of risk assessments from...

Nick Cohen’s piece three years ago in The Observer (Jan 5, 2017) was mainly about Mr Trump but, to my mind, it was also one of the best general essays on leadership I have read and remains highly relevant. A flavour of the piece: “No one in the West has seen Trump’s kind of triumph…But look around your workplace…little Hitlers…They exhibit all the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder…less...

So, if you are “the CEO”: are you likely to be “the CEO” in three years time? if yes, why, and how will you have changed, if at all? if not, will you have jumped or been pushed See the blog version of this podcast episode here: https://ciaranfenton.wordpress.com/2020/01/13/small-change-you-three-years-from-now/

“Least likely to say”  is a great board game, it’s easy to play and, although I facilitate these, you don’t need a facilitator. You can play this at home, as it were, in your own boardroom. Here are the instructions: Step 1: It Choose someone to be “it”.  Say, the CEO. Step 2: Shout out The CEO stays quiet and everyone else shouts out at once what the CEO is least likely to say the first...

SMALL CHANGE by Ciarán Fenton How small changes in behaviour have a big impact on how you work, lead or follow That’s the title of an ebook I wrote in early 2020, initially,  as a series of 50 short blogs – index here  – and as a framework for a longer book. Section 1.10 CEOs with low EQ struggle in a crisis