Tea is regarded as a quintessentially British drink, conjuring up images of pottery crockery, polite conversations with the vicar and exceedingly good cakes. However, this quaint mental picture is a little misleading. For starters, tea originated in China, rather than Chelsea. And it was a drink developed by accident. Rumour…

Different copywriters have different ways of writing copy. I ‘write’ it. With a pen. To me, hopping straight onto the keyboard is like a film director starting a movie by turning on the camera. Writing, in my opinion, is an iterative process and involves scribbling things out, making notes in…

To many people, nowadays, the paperclip is a tool for removing a SIM card or ejecting a CD from an old slot drive. But it’s actually the solution to a clerical problem that had irritated people for hundreds of years. Since the dawn of the printed document, there was a…

In his excellent book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell summarises a view that I think is very prevalent. “We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it.” Gladwell goes on to demonstrate how there are…

Covid-19 has been a shot in the arm for the P word. Ever since ‘that’ Simon Sinek video started doing the rounds, Purpose has been on the radar of most self-respecting business leaders. Having a Why? has been as essential as a Vision and Mission statement, taking pride of place…

Background Although staff wellbeing is the highest priority, businesses have faced many complex operational challenges, in an attempt to keep functioning successfully during the pandemic. Many face to face situations have been replaced by online solutions but some things simply cannot be replaced by a virtual, digital experience. For example…

There is a powerful scene in The Crown in which Prince Philip gets an opportunity to meet the three American astronauts who had returned to earth after landing on the moon. Armstrong, Aldrin and Conrad had been summoned for a private conversation with the Prince as a kind of break-out…

During my LSP facilitation training I was asked to build a model that demonstrated one of my personal traits — or what I considered to be one of them. I regard myself as pretty modest, so modesty became the subject of my build. What you see here is an example…