CorporateCoach

I attended a workshop at the ICF Annual Conference last week by Shirlaws. Shirlaws is a business coaching company that was started in Australia in 1999 and now has coaches in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the USA; they have 90 coaches in the UK alone. They believe the best results […]

One of the joys of travel is reading foreign newspapers. Not only does this enable me to read about different places but it also enables me to read news from a different perspective.
A significant event it is an important factor in the process of change. A significant event can release pent up forces and achieve […]

Regular readers of CorporateCoach will be aware of my interest in the Law of Unintended Consequences.
There is another concept that we have heard a lot about recently, “moral hazard”. The discussion has generally been around the potential moral hazard of helping out failing banks and supporting investors who have lost money. The […]

Well, the summer is over for us in the north. I think there has been a mistake worrying about global warming. The issue seems to be global ‘wetting’ or even, in the Gulf of Mexico, global ‘winding’. Not to mention turbulence in the money markets.
So it is back to work for us […]

When I was seven years old I had a burst appendix and spent a month in hospital. At the end of this time I had to learn to walk again because my muscles had lost so much strength.
A month ago I broke my wrist and, now that I am free of a cast, I am […]

My first job was for Marconi on a site just outside Chelmsford. Although I cycled to work many people travelled by car and I was fascinated to observe in how many cases the man drove the car to the car park and then got out to go to work. The woman then slid across […]

I was delighted on Saturday to see the Welsh flag flying from Birmingham’s Council House. This grand building, which is the local seat of government, dominates the square outside our head office.
St David is the patron saint of Wales and he is celebrated on 1 March. I used to live in Llanddewi Dewi, […]

I have been reading "Tuesdays with Morrie". This much loved small book is the record of the dying days of a sociology lecturer, Morrie Schwartz, as experienced in a series of discussions by journalist Mitch Albom.
Morrie decided that an account of his dying should be a course in living and, Tuesday by Tuesday, he […]

I have recently been preparing some material on Customer Care. Increasingly organisations are recognising the importance of customer care to differentiate their product or service.
Two issues reinforce the importance of customer service and customer care in the Internet age.
We have been having a series of problems with customer service from the British bank, Abbey. […]

Apparently today is called Blue Monday, the most miserable day of the year! Obviously, the good news is that every day in the rest of 2008 is going to be better.
Blue Monday marks the start of the final full week of January and is seen as the time when people experience a series of […]

They say that there is only one opportunity to create a first impression. But how many chances do you have to become the new new thing? Steve jobs has made a habit of it and Apple has benefited greatly. But I read recently that Google, which is continually launching new products and […]

I have at last managed to view Al Gore’s film "An Inconvenient Truth" about climate change.
Whether it was my preconditioning or not, my sense afterwards was that we are missing the point.
I had a similar experience when I saw "Supersize Me". This featured the gain in weight and deterioration in health of Morgan Spurlock, […]

I have had an interesting couple of months, with quite a lot if international travel. I have inter-leaved a couple of intensive trainings with Roger Hamilton of XL Results Foundation in Bali and London with a couple of faciliations in Ghana and the UK. They have been quite illuminating for me.
One of the most […]

Although I live right in the centre of Birmingham, my home is in a quiet spot overlooking three locks of a canal. As I looked out of my window yesterday I noticed the leaves falling from the trees opposite. It occurred to me that they are dying; they are being shed so […]

In Issue 168 of CorporateCoach I discussed legacy statements and asked for some more suggestions from readers. Here are the ones I received: -
Richard:

Here is my legacy statement – "He made a difference to his world!"
A great question for all of us to consider. I started using it in a GE Career/Life Planning […]

They say that time is an artificial construct. So it is OK for me to send out a newsletter dated October in November
We have been working very hard to complete several projects for launch at the International […]

I have recently returned from Ghana, where I spent a very pleasant three days facilitating a meeting of Nigerian oil executives, coming away with both optimistic and pessimistic thoughts about […]

I have been delighted to collect some more interesting quotations; please keep them coming.
"Worrying is praying for what you don’t want." Bill Harris
"They […]

I was delighted to receive some more suggestions for contra quotes following my last editorial, and I list below the ones that are publishable!
"If it is worth doing, it is worth […]

Although most sayings have a truth within them, it can be fun to play with them and try the opposite. I once worked for a managing director who was very keen to say "Never expect of yourself what you would not expect of another." […]