Monthly Archives: December 2010

Playing to win

Posted on December 31, 2010 by

I’ve been thinking recently about how to ‘be’ at work. Not everything – or everyone – is easy to get along with. Working life has many pressures and frustrations. I’ve often worked too long or too hard in my working … Continue reading →

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Adjacent Possible

Posted on December 27, 2010 by

I read recently that all successful innovation expands into the ‘adjacent possible’. Whether it’s spines becoming feathers, swords becoming ploughshares or mobiles becoming smartphones, successful innovation depends on adapting technology to expand into an adjacent – and sometimes very different … Continue reading →

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Weird

Posted on December 21, 2010 by

If every person is valuable and every person is different, then trying to understand one another is both important and hard. Important because everyone’s point of view matters, hard because though we’re all wired the same, everyone’s inputs – in … Continue reading →

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Corporate Punishment iv) Too much to say

Posted on December 18, 2010 by

It is a truism that no-one is more interested in what we have to say than ourselves. On the contrary, it is a common misapprehension that the more you say the more influential you are being. It ain’t necessarily so. … Continue reading →

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Smiling

Posted on December 16, 2010 by

Against the grain today I put on a smiling face. In so doing I added measurably to the sum of human happiness. So simple, yet sometimes so hard. Why don’t we all do it more? I can’t take all the … Continue reading →

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Indignity

Posted on December 9, 2010 by

Life is full of indignities, small and large. I, like most people, am easily persuaded that life’s indignities have been targeted at me by some malign intent. Human beings are programmed to look for causation. It’s a key survival skill. … Continue reading →

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Mining

Posted on December 4, 2010 by

Some time ago the thought came to me that knowledge is an industrial business these days. In Aristotle’s era knowledge was lying around like coals on the fabled Newcastle beach. That’s not to say that Aristotle’s ceaseless collecting and inquiring … Continue reading →

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Corporate Punishment iii) Ducking and diving

Posted on December 2, 2010 by

I used to work in UK Government. Quite rightly it is the lot of government in democratic societies to be scrutinised and held to account. The negative side effect is it tends to create a climate of fear of saying … Continue reading →

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