Every profession has its maestros, and every maestro is great because of their instincts, their ability to hit the right note, paint the right shade, know what the missing element is going to look like, or clinch the argument before the jury. Instincts lie somewhere in the murk between muscle memory and intellectual understanding. When…
Stephen Covey’s second rule of effectiveness is “Begin with the end in mind”, and of course he’s correct. But you can’t really find an answer until you know precisely what the problem is. Undoubtedly you need to know the desired end, but you also need to know what you have at hand right now. Most…
I’m currently working through Mark Carney’s book Value(s), and I’ll confess it’s a tough read. Takes me back to postgrad economics classes, almost that kind of textbook reading. Interesting and valid, but not Tom Clancy, either. You really have to read, stop, contemplate, then move forward. Carney lays a careful bedrock of the history of…
Young infants, given a board and a handful of pegs, will puzzle and persevere until they have sorted all the coloured pegs into the correctly shaped holes. They can’t seem to help themselves – the need to solve is one of the first instincts of young children. Solving makes us happy. Conversely, a failure to…
Easter, to the extent it retains any religious message, may be our day to celebrate resurrection and hope. But Good Friday may be the more important day. To be sure, Christians almost certainly have the dates all wrong here, even when Passover and the Paschal holiday overlap. But that’s not the point. The message is…
Inbound referrals are a wonderful source of work, and are a compliment to your reputation. They should be honoured and without exception dealt with professionally. That said, you might be surprised that a key part of the art of dealing with inbound referrals is knowing when to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Here’s the thing:…
If you can get through an entire career without mudwrestling with a client, consider yourself very lucky. There’s very little that can compare with the economic, reputational, and emotional cost of an ugly dispute with a client, or more accurately, former client. How bad? In a best case scenario you can cut your losses and…
For years, teaching in a small town middle school, I enjoyed mythic status, far beyond what I deserved. Whether or not I was a good teacher is for others to say, but I can say with utter confidence that I ran a tight ship. “Classroom management”, as it was called in the day, was my…
Most email platforms now incorporate artificial intelligence, giving you a summary of what they think the sender said to you, then a “suggested” response, together with a convenient and tempting send button. Easy-peasy. Now you can communicate without effort, without even having to think about it! What could possibly go wrong? To be sure, our…
A little-known coal mining boy who lifted himself up to become an important public figure, gas and oil tycoon and philanthropist was Robert Watchorn (1858-1944). What little we know of Watchorn’s early days tells us only that he was born in Alfreton, Derbyshire, England and attended a Church of England school until he was eleven….