CorporateCoach

I love to watch the law of unintended consequences in action and have not written about it recently. You know, because people do not think from a systems perspective they do things that end up eventually achieving the opposite of the original objective.

"The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held in March 2006 in […]

This game can be used to help teams understand the impact of communication between those who develop plans and those who have to implement them. It also highlights helpful and not so helpful behaviours when planning, assigning or completing tasks. Teams that regularly work on problem solving will find the game useful for alerting them […]

Have you ever been unsure about what to SAY in a networking situation? If you have then you were right to be unsure because it would have been better to know […]

In my early days as a consultant I claimed that every three years as a management consultant was the equivalent of another MBA. I was continually exposed to new ideas and, more important, to new situations. I was continuously learning from my clients and being stretched to understand more.
I am reminded of this recently when […]

With American business facing a leadership crisis and top corporate executives being replaced at a rate of one per day, Aubrey Daniels and James Daniels introduce readers to a bold and proven new way to measure and pursue leadership in their new book Measure of a Leader.
More often than not, leaders who are held […]

Several years ago, when American Airlines flew from Birmingham, I was sitting in an aircraft waiting to take off for Chicago. An announcement came that, because of the cross winds, we were overloaded and would have to wait to see whether the wind would change or whether our luggage would have to be shipped by […]

Dear Editor

Your article, How to decide where to live, prompted much thought. My relatives are not local and I do not have a wide circle of friends. However, I have lived in the area for 10 years. Is it enough? Yes it is - I enjoy ‘grabbing the moment’. If it is a nice day […]

When I was a youngster, my aunt, an English teacher, wrote these words by Shakespeare in my autograph book:

To thine own self be true,
and it must follow, as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man.

I puzzled over this for a long time […]

For more than a year in my early career I worked in the City of London; in the hub of a metropolitan, cosmopolitan world class city. I was surrounded by cultural activities; a wonderful opportunity. What did I do? Each night I fled home on the train. In the whole time I was working there […]

My first degree was in civil engineering, including a final year elective on project management. In this subject I was introduced to critical path analysis. Many years later I read The Goal, by Eliyahu M Goldratt. It is based on his theory of constraints, a similar principle of ensuring that work can flow unhindered […]