I’m waiting in a coffee shop whilst my car gets its MOT done. By “waiting” I really mean “having breakfast” and coffee. It’s a nice, clean, recently opened little place with a reasonable breakfast too. But it doesn’t have many customers, 3 in fact in the hour I’ve been here and I think I know…
Cavalry charges: that’s how it used to be in the good old days! But then came the Tank: dirty, ugly, noisy and of course terribly effective in battle. So the horses moved from the battlefield to other parts of the Army. So it must be a bit of a surprise to find that the British Army still…
Last week I went on a business trip to Boston, to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in fact on what was my first real visit the the USA. I was away from home for a total of 100 hours, yet the impact the trip had on me and the lessons I learnt, made it feel far…
When I used Windows XP I had a nice little icon on my toolbar to take me back to the Desktop, now having moved to Windows 7 I couldn’t find a similar icon and for the last few months have been “living” without it. You know: just making do, accepting the price of progress is…
Someone told me a great, yet also sad, story recently that is a valuable analogy for business. It concerns a crashing aircraft and how the problem was managed at the time. The story, as I remember it goes like this: a transatlantic flight crashed on its way across the ocean, and all souls were lost….
After an Olympic week that began with the most wonderful opening ceremony and a weekend that produced some great results for Britain, the performances and results have been inspiring and truly wonderful. But the games have shown themselves to be far more than just the competition and the results in my opinion. They have delivered a grace,…
Boris Johnson won in London, George Galloway won in Bradford, but what is it that made them winners? I think the answer is pretty clear: they both stood for something and both connected with and appealed to the voters.
It’s been almost a month since I wrote anything here, and I’ve been equally quiet on Twitter as well in recent weeks. But it’s now come to an end. It would be easy to say that I did it for Lent, but I didn’t. I’ve just been too damn busy to get the juices flowing,…
For my thoughts on the New Year Honours please refer to this old post Some messages just never lose their relevance!
This lovely tale explains our tax system and the flaws in a lovely way: Suppose that every evening, 10 men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this :- The first four men…
It was a nice enough morning as I recall. The sun was shining and the journey to head office was an easy ride for once. I was meeting my Director in NTL to review the plans for redundancies, and I was “under threat”. The formal meeting went well, the regrets were expressed that all present…
I heard a lovely story tonight on Live at the Apollo, probably a repeat, but what the heck. Man comes home from a night out with the boys. Has had a few, may 2 or 3 too many. When he gets to the front door and finds his key the deep breathing begins. And so…
