The blog.

“Playing tennis on Mars”: Why lessons from sport can sideline victory in business

What could Kobe Bryant have taught you about being a better CEO? What can you learn from Bill Belichick about driving your team’s performance? With their shared focus on performance and winning, and because our brains are wired to think in analogies and metaphors, it’s quick and easy to draw comparisons between sport and business leadership. But it can also be lazy and problematic.

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Books,

Complexity Thinking,

Decision Making,

Entrepreneurship,

High Performing Teams,

Leadership,

14.02.25

The Duck-Rabbit & the Polarities of Leadership

A polarity is a paradoxical situation in which two interdependent and seemingly contradictory states must be maintained for success over time. In business, leadership and life, we find ourselves presented by polarities all the time, often without even realising. As leaders, we’re told that we must be great problem solvers. That’s true, but a polarity is not the same thing as a problem, for which a definitive solution can be reached at a given point in time. That’s why the ability to recognise when we are facing a polarity – otherwise known as a paradox, duality, dichotomy, tension, or wicked problem

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Books,

Complexity Thinking,

Decision Making,

Entrepreneurship,

Executive Coaching,

High Performing Teams,

Leadership,

22.03.23

8 Time Management Techniques for CEOs

Time management is one of the most common themes in my coaching conversations with CEOs and other leaders. There’s just not enough time in their calendar to get everything done. It’s a challenge for any leader but it’s particularly acute for executives in the high-growth businesses that I work with, as they realise that they can’t scale themselves at the same rate as their business. Born out of real coaching experience with CEOs and other C-Suite executives, here’s 8 proven time management techniques that will help you manage and leverage your time better. Experimenting with these time management techniques will,

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Advising,

Complexity Thinking,

Decision Making,

Entrepreneurship,

Executive Coaching,

High Performing Teams,

Leadership,

15.09.22

A Deliberately Developmental Experiment

When the founders at Future Arc approached me to develop a business-wide coaching programme, they were clear they wanted to do something different. It felt right that a disruptive company that puts talent development at the heart of its organisation should embrace a new approach to developing its people. Fascinated by how we can build organisations and develop individuals for the future, and already drawing on Robert Kegan and colleagues’ work on adult development in my coaching practice, I introduced them to the concept of the Deliberately Developmental Organization (DDO). A DDO is organized around the deceptively simple but radical

This entry was posted in

Advising,

Complexity Thinking,

Entrepreneurship,

Executive Coaching,

High Performing Teams,

Leadership,

Mentoring,

01.04.22