Preventing Burnout
In my average week, I work with 8 clients for 90 minutes at a time. Then I have about 5 conversations with people who are interested in working with me, or someone connected to me wanting to think through a…
Tag Resilience
Businesses Are Not Machines, Nor Are You.
As South Africa came out of our fifth week of lockdown sometime in May last year, I took the decision to stop reading COVID news. I was frazzled by the onslaught of different theories and opinions. South Africa’s hard lockdown…
Hello. Please Open Me. We’re Back.
Good morning friends I’ve missed you. I’ve missed the ritual of sitting down each week to write to you, to communicate with you. I’ve missed the conversations that follow. It is good to be back. Well, strictly speaking, we’re not…
The Last Email Of The Year
Good morning friends This is our last email for the year. Thank you for reading, for all the times you’ve reached out to me, for the times you’ve gifted me with suggestions that have enriched my knowledge, for inspiring me…
The Power of Listening
Last week’s email reflected on how psychologically unsafe environments destroy value by silencing people or, more insidiously, by creating conditions in which people do not feel safe to speak and so silence themselves. In the silence, value is hidden. Amy Edmondson, Professor…
What Will You Do?
Wow, it’s the last Sunday of September. What a year! This painting by Alexandra Karakashian has captured the year for me. Today’s subject was inspired by an elder of mine who would ask me, “What have you done recently with your position…
Be Gentle And Ambitious
A few days ago, The New Yorker published this cartoon with the caption, “Remember when we thought the pandemic was only going to last a couple of weeks?” Last week Fortune Magazine published the results of a survey of the CEOs of…
Ways To Keep Moving Forward
Good morning good friends As we all know, this is a time of profound change. Plans that were conceptualised just 6 months ago have had to be discarded, and often nothing clear has, or perhaps even can, taken their place.…
How to Make Mistakes
Happy Sunday everyone My coaching practice means I spend hours each week in deep conversation with people across the world. My client base is diverse in every sense of the word, so by the end of the week I have a good…
Strategy Lesson: Listen To Weak Signals
Dear All Thank you all for your reflections on last week’s letter. The Thabo Mbeki quotation that “no solution to current problems can be found unless we understand their historical origins” resonated with many of you. It took me back to…
The Story Behind The Story
I had started writing a different letter to you this week and then, as I watched this sunset from a friend’s porch in the Banhoek Valley, this letter started to write itself and so here we are, with a different letter to the…
The Wisdom of Forests
A couple of years ago, Ralph Freese Chief Executive Director of the African Leadership Initiative suggested that I would enjoy The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer-Prize,. He was right. Central to the book is the insight, that in our…