“Any fool can buy a car, but you can’t buy respect”. “free fall”, Robert Crais You can’t buy respect.  You have to earn it. There’s some jobs where hierarchy and status mean that everyone below you more or less does as you tell them. I imagine the armed forces work like this, and the police…

At the centenary of suffrage for some women in the UK, a report reveals that girls as young as 7 think women less smart than men. A recent report on the career aspirations of 7-11 year olds has concluded that from a very young age most children stereotype jobs according to gender and their career…

How many voices do you need for great leadership? Writer and leadership coach, Amy Jen Su wrote in Harvard Business Review earlier this year that you need to cultivate many different leadership voices rather than simply focussing on trying to appear confident. She lists five different voices that she says are essential for leadership –…

Path dependence is our business.  Path dependence can break our business. The qwerty keyboard doesn’t make much sense. It did once, it was designed to make typing easier. When typewriters were manual, typing was limited largely to professional typists who used all their fingers for touch typing. Mad Men depicted the typing pool perfectly.  In…

Better ideas Creative problem solving is crucial to everyone’s job now.  Innovation is part of the day job. Sometimes that means doing new things in new ways.  Sometimes that means new things in old ways or old things in new ways. There’s two dominant schools of thought on innovation in media.  Professionals who believe that…

In 1963 the “Profumo Affair” shook the nation.  Government minister John Profumo had been accused of “improper conduct”, ie sleeping with a model named Christine Keeler, who simultaneously was also said to be in a relationship with a Soviet diplomat at the height of the Cold War.  The press ran a story suggesting that her…

A small poll of business leaders gives mixed results.  With Brexit consequences looming and uncertain negotiations on the horizon there is much insecurity and business leaders don’t like too many variables and the uncertainty that follows. David Wilding of Twitter was out talking to media and agency heads as 2017 wrapped up and reports many accounts…

84% businesses say that AI will give them competitive advantage. 23% say that they’ve currently incorporated it in their processes or service offerings today. These stats come from Diane Black, Director at E&Y, speaking at Datatech’s conference last month. Two points arise from this.  First that the potential of AI is being thought about in…

Oh no it isn’t Oh yes it is. It’s maybe not generally known that the original folk tales on which one of the greatest hits of panto is loosely based were really quite dark. The Grimm Brothers telling of Cinderella differs from the panto and Disney version in several respects.  For instance Cinderella’s ball gown…

“And now for our grand finish: Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ in the manner of Bach” It’s a clever musical trick.  Adapting an existing tune or melody in the manner of another composer.  The pre-dinner entertainment at the Marketing Society annual gala consisted of pianists Orit Wolfe and Tal Zilber performing familiar tunes in unfamiliar…

“Comfortable spaces to have uncomfortable conversations” So said, Gemma Greaves, ceo Marketing Society, as she introduced this year’s conference at the Science Museum. In 2016 I praised the conference content but remarked about the lack of gender diversity on stage.  As a result Gemma recruited me to her conference panel for this year. Let’s get…

“His team would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity” (Source: feedback review from a large US corporation) Feedback is crucial. I always want more feedback on how I’m doing. My ceo Josh Krichefski reminded his board recently to seek feedback frequently and act on it. Feedback at work has evolved from a…