Take Away Line It’s generally well worth looking below the surface when faced with a consultancy assignment. What’s asked for can be odd, appear wrong, but beneath the surface, there may be a more than valid request for help, but expressed in a way that masks the deeper challenge. Framing this challenge in medical language,…
Take Away Line If there’s anything we can learn from the collapse of the banks and other major institutions, it’s that their boards have to be more than a mere shadowy presence: their input matters. The consequences of weak governance can be hard to spot until it’s too late. Underpinning weak governance is ignorance –…
Take Away Line As the group at the ‘top of the shop’ in their organisations, there is an easy and natural tendency for boards to become somewhat closed off, like a closed system, impervious to signals of how it may be going. Only by opening up can a board develop. The ‘royal road’ to excellence…
Take Away Line Good governance, along with its great governance and weak governance counterparts, is only partly a describable condition – and in this blog we have a go at that – but it is also an outcome from a set of processes to help a board discern how well it is doing and responding…
Take Away Line After a year of exciting and challenging international assignments, alongside the more typical ones in the UK and other European Countries, it’s time to roast a Christmas chestnut and reflect on the learning that they have brought in their wake. So, in a Christmas stocking full of tall stories from far lands,…
Take Away Line Rattling through the bush on a long journey can be a great way to reflect, discuss and formulate. On one journey in the Madagascan Highlands, we talked about how to choose the right leadership development programme, developing a simple typology of four types aimed at helping those new to these ideas a…
Take Away Line The European Union is supporting the development of civil society in a number of its neighbours, seeing their stability and prosperity as in our interest as well as a good thing to support. Solidarity in action. But developing civil society in a country that has often been reported as being nervous about…
Take Away Line As high stress levels seem to be endemic in professional life, attention turns to understanding how to cope and, better still, to lead oneself and ones team through the stress. The process of moving from being subject to stress to a position of having the personal wellbeing and skills to support others…
Take Away Line Much of the literature on happiness seems to emphasise the importance of removing barriers to happiness, since happiness is more or less a natural state. Removing barriers has been a theme of all these articles. But there is also the question of our relationship with our core, our inner lives, the very…
Take Away Line Whether it’s to survive the tough times we live in or to perform in the Olympics, we have to keep well. Keeping well is the baseline for job satisfaction and happiness generally. But wellness is not just a narrow concept akin to fitness or diet; it encompasses taking a holistic view across…
