Way back in the day, someone once said that if everyone in a team agrees on something, then why do we need all those people on the team. It was a reminder that we need diverse thoughts, ideas and opinions in order to be able to arrive at the best decisions possible.

For the past two years I have made several attempts to capture in words what I’ve learnt about effective high-performance teamwork from both my struggles as well as a few successes. These are hard won insights from introspection, from experience.

I screwed up this week.

It was in one of the teams I’m a part of. One team member said something to me four times and I didn’t hear it.

They got cross at me because I wasn’t listening and didn’t hear the message.

This stung. It really stung.

Do you recall seeing one of those grids of letters and being asked to say what word jumps out at you?

I’m reminded of this when I switch on my digital view of the world. Like most of us, my contact with the world has been driven largely through an internet connection over the past three months.

Over the past few weeks, alongside speaking engagements, I’ve been working on many projects. One of those has been around managing my ideas and information. How I, and I suspect many others fall into the same trap is that we’ve not looked at how we manage information and our time since we were taught techniques for doing this at school and university.

In times of change, many new opportunities are born. It’s the fleet of foot, the people who are looking for the opportunities that are most likely to find them.

This article shares the stories of ten iconic businesses including IBM, Disney and AirBnB that were created during recessions.

“set your course by the stars, not the lights of every passing ship”

In 1993, Lou Gerstner took over at IBM when it was on the brink of bankruptcy. His singular mission in the early days was summed up by one word. Survival. It was a clear message to the whole business. Manage costs. Find new revenue. It was a simple, powerful and clear story of what they needed to do.

In 2009, I had a challenge. A struggling business, a marriage which was lukewarm at best and a family life that needed to be turned around. The single best thing we did as a family team was to re-write the story of our future.

As many of us get used to the idea of being self isolated, we're facing a different set of challenges around working whilst at home.

Although, clearly under very different circumstances, we have some experience having effectively self isolated on a small boat whilst continuing to work and also have our kids with us over a two year period.

Ideas to Change the World

I notice that many of us live in bubbles. The same people, the same ideas, the same news sources and the same thoughts flying around inside our heads. I include myself in this and no matter how much we think we have independent thinking, we are all porous and cannot help but be influenced by whats around us.

High Flyers pay a price in misery at home

The Sunday Times this week shared the findings of a survey of more than 500 people earning over £100,000 a year.

The poll covering business owners, board directors and senior managers found 71% who admitted to personal problems thought these had a serious impact on their productivity or performance.