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October 22, 2018
It’s hard to write about the business climate these days without straying into the politics of fear. It’s been a weird year. On both sides of the Atlantic, people voted in 2016 in response to cleverly constructed, factually questionable campaigns provoking a fear response. On both sides of the Atlantic, we’ve ended up with something far more scary as a result. Voting out of fear rarely leads to a good...
Read MoreJuly 4, 2018
According to a recent article in The Observer 75% of teachers are suffering from serious stress at work. Sadly, I wasn’t too surprised to read this. What was more surprising was that 62% of the entire working population of the UK reports serious, work-related stress. That can’t be good. There are plenty of clever articles online about why we all seem to be getting busier and busier. This one, in...
Read MoreFebruary 7, 2018
Hello people out there in the digital world. This won’t take long, promise. I’m doing a pre-Valentines survey about brands that people are prepared to say that they LOVE: If you just comment below, I can enter your ideas into the research project. And if you also want to mention a brand that you hate, that’s OK too. So, let me know which brand is feeling your LOVE right now?
Read MoreNovember 30, 2017
It’s easy to do year-end predictions, right? After all, nobody bothers to check them. Wrong. As a piece of fun, I thought I’d have a look at a couple of serious newspapers, and see what they predicted for 2017. How much did they get right? And how much did they get wrong? Our two victims are The Guardian (very worthy) and The Financial Times (very serious indeed). To be fair,...
Read MoreOctober 9, 2017
Shock horror. You don’t all agree !!! Further to my blog published in the Silly Season, about emails and holidays: It is clear from the various responses that there is a huge variety of opinion on this subject. Some claimed to ignore emails completely while on holiday. Others thought that the question was silly: of course they checked their mails, regularly, every day, holiday or no holiday. My own experience was that I did end...
Read MoreAugust 7, 2017
I have been trying to find out how many people have a holiday in which they remain out of contact with their office. In which, in short, they resist checking their email. Back in 2015 The Daily Mail reported that one in three of us check our work email every day when we are on holiday. As that article highlights, this may be entirely voluntary. As in: some of us...
Read MoreMarch 11, 2017
Just in case our big budget, national TV launch hasn’t reached you: our sister brand, Headthink, is now alive and kicking. Kicking is the right word. Here is a clue to our latest article, which you will find on our shiny, new site: Headthink was set up to offer Thought Leadership services. And to give me an excuse to write about things that are bugging me. Do take a look around...
Read MoreOctober 6, 2016
Whichever way you voted on June 23rd, the result will affect your business messaging. In at least two ways. First, we are heading into an economic downturn. When the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, tells the party faithful that the future will be “turbulent” and “daunting” he is probably not exaggerating. Yes, he mentions fiscal stimulus, via investment in UK infrastructure. But 2017 still looks like being a tough year. So, if...
Read MoreJune 29, 2016
I’ve just been re-reading my previous blog post. I think I underplayed my concerns about the absence of facts in the campaigning that has led to Brexit. Project Fear was a disastrous strategic and tactical miscalculation. The effect of engaging a scare-mongering tone was (for Cameron and others) to become the Boys Who Cried Wolf. Not enough people took the Remain Camp seriously, because they were not rigorous enough in...
Read MoreMay 24, 2016
So, the other day, I was listening to Radio 4 covering “The Brexit Debate”. Topic of the day was whether or not we should worry about Turkey joining the EU. A Steadfast Remainer reassured us that we need not worry, as we can block Turkey’s membership at any point. A Vote Leave interviewee said the opposite. The BBC interviewer (I think it was Nick Robinson) made no comment or intervention...
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