#223: What is Strategy?
Good morning good people I hope you’re well. The last few weeks haven’t had a lot of space for segues into art, wine and food, and today is not that different. I’ll be brief. You may remember a year ago…
Tag Personal Mastery
#214: Settle Into Your Comfort Zone
Dear friends During the pandemic, I received an email from one of my favourite independent bookstores, Cape Town’s The Book Lounge, with an unusual proposition – ‘send us an email telling us what books you’ve enjoyed, and we’ll make a…
#213: Stay in Your Comfort Zone
Dear friends Bibliophiles should diarise 4 August and oenophiles 22 August. I first encountered Anna de Koningh, in Phakamisa Ndzamela’s masterfully researched The Native Merchants, which I wrote about here. She started life enslaved and ended it as one of…
#212: Managers can change the world
Dear friends Ten days ago, whilst working in the pre-dawn – that sounds hard-working, but in truth, winter sunrise is only at 08h00 – I heard a familiar yet always thrilling sound. A sound somewhat like a water-logged digeridoo being…
#210: The Inner Work of Leadership: Caring for Yourself and Others
Good morning friends Today is more essay than letter. It’s a bit long. I apologise, but is about your self-care, about self-care for leaders. It needed the words. I’d love to know what you think. You can find me on LinkedIn…
#209: Unlocking Engagement
Dear friends Apologies to those of you who missed my announcement that I wasn’t writing last weekend, I was flattered to know that you missed our letter. I was speaking at Interconnect Systems Strategy Conference and Standard Bank Group’s Software…
#198: Confront the Facts (with help from A.E. Housman)
Dear Friends After last week’s letter, I received several emails sharing memories of other grandfathers who’d served in WW2 and other conflicts. Each email reflected on the pain that lived on decades past the war. William Bird alerted me…
#191: Being Effective (Part Two)
Dear All My holiday break, of course, included wine, I live in Cape Town after all. There was a lazy Winemaker’s lunch beneath Rust en Vrede’s oaks. Despite summer’s heat, the sirloins demanded their Estate Syrah, it wasn’t a mistake.…
#190: How To Be Effective/Lessons from Peter Drucker
I apologise. I know that all effective conversations have four components – establishing relationship, deepening understanding, exploring possibilities, and agreeing action. Last week, I ignored this. It was a month since I’d written to you, and I felt pressured (my…
#189: How to Be Successful (& eat well)
Good morning my dear friends We’re back. I trust you have had a good start to your year. I started my year compiling my 2024 reading list (These were my favourite books in 2023). Let me know what you think is missing…
#187: Questions for powerful reflection
Dear friends Thank you for your messages after last week’s letter. Although it broke format and ran much longer than usual, it appears it resonated. I appreciated the feedback and the conversations that followed. Appropriately for the second last letter of…
#184: Sitting and Thinking
Good morning good people This week, I intended to share insights from Shafiq Morton’s A Mercy to All, which tells the story of Gift of the Givers and its founder, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman. And then, on Thursday morning, Ahmed Abbasi, the…