At ten years old and in Year 6, my youngest of three is perched on the edge of childhood. Any parent with a child of the same age will recognise the time, where you start see the first indications of a transition. It is an inevitable rite of passage when a little girl or boy begins to leave a few of...
The world of work is changing at a head-spinning rate and opportunity for positive change comes in many forms. Smart organisations are embracing factors such as Brexit, changes in traditional patterns of employment, technological advances and shifts in customer behaviour to create robust, future-fit cultures. The future is arriving faster than many suspected or planned for but with the right knowledge...
If you choose to get swept along with ‘Blue Monday’ theory today - the pseudoscience designed to persuade you that unhappiness is inevitable - you may as well go back to bed now, only making the effort to click online for the purchase that will surely fix you. The Blue Monday myth was originally used as a marketing ploy by a...
No one likes to be told they are biased. Most progressive, modern people in business would like to think they are open-minded, gender neutral and non-discriminatory. The stats, however, tell a different story. Barely 3% of Britain’s most powerful and influential people are from black and minority ethnic groups, according to analysis that highlights inequality, despite decades of legislation to address discrimination....
Has Health and Safety gone mad? That was certainly the message from Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, in a recent article about the safety culture in schools. Ms Spielman said that, in her opinion, some of the measures that school staff go to, to keep children safe, are ‘simply barmy.’ From the examples she gave, we have to agree. It does...
I have had a grand total of nine ‘first days’ at school. Some are just a fog of teachers’ names, confusing rules and long corridors, others form some of my most vivid memories. Arizona 2008, Canyon Springs Elementary school in the scorching heat. Crouched under my desk peeking at the desert though the barred windows. A siren was screeching as the...
Teenagers’ brains are not yet fully developed, meaning that they need more sleep than the rest of us put together - they are definitely not morning larks! They can be impulsive and moody; they spend their whole time velcroed to their mobile phones and, while they love to chat to each other on social media, they aren’t quite so keen to...
Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, once said: "Appreciate everything your associates do. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune." Sam is right. Everyone likes praise and recognition, and all good leaders understand this. Academics have even studied the links between reward and productivity. In one study, The...
In fact, I love laughing probably more than most. I dedicated my life to the pursuit of giggling like a schoolboy at anything and everything. If too much time has passed in a meeting or during a dinner my brain will be working a hundred miles an hour to look for the possibility of a guffaw, titter, cackle, call it what...
