Throughout this period of lockdown, I’ve been so looking forward to the collective waves of gratitude that we’d experience, just as we’ve lived through the pandemic restrictions collectively. Small things we’d taken for granted would be cause for celebration.
While that has partly been true as various constraints have recently been eased where I live, a more dominant emotion in me and those close to me has been stress. Continue reading “Stressful Gratitude”
“How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?”[1]
This week I’ve been reading various books on the subject of influence. How people change their behaviour, and how other people can persuade them to do so. So timely.
Jonah Berger’s book The Catalyst is framed this way, “Rather than asking what might convince someone to change…start with a more basic question: Why hasn’t that person changed already?”[2] Continue reading “Influencing Change”
“What is the one thing you’ve learned this week?” It was a question sent to me on Twitter and, true to form, I struggled to answer it. Only one?
The One Thing is a book I’ve really appreciated. Its core concept of “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” appeals to me, in a “Wow, I wish I could figure that out” kind of way. Continue reading “The One Thing I’ve Learned This Week”
With the possible exception of 9/11, this is the first time I am very conscious of living through a memorable period in history. It’s a time that will be discussed in my granddaughter’s history classes and used as the setting of future novels.
I’m struck by the tension between writing the story and having it written for me. Continue reading “From the Middle of the Story”
A ten-year study of how Italy’s 15 largest cities weathered the global financial crisis of the late 2000s found that organizations’ decision-making styles before the collapse largely matched their styles during and after the crisis. Those that did formal strategic planning continued to do so. Those that used an incremental, ad hoc planning approach did so before and after. Those whose approach was described as “inertia” before fell into that same category after.*
Plus ça change…. Continue reading “Show up how you want to end up”
