The little elephants

Outside Spitalfields Market in London, small bronze elephants stand guard. Baby elephants. Orphaned because humans wanted something they had no right to take. Ivory. Status. Greed dressed up as commerce. And yet. Someone decided to rescue those babies. Someone built a...

Change hurts less than stagnation

We announce the change and assume the work is done. It never is. Change has a curve. John Fisher formalized it. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described its emotional architecture long before business adopted the concept. The curve moves through denial, resistance,...

When the music stops

Liverpool used to play heavy metal football. Fast. Relentless. Chaotic in the best possible way. You knew exactly what you were going to get. So did the opposition. That was the point. Eighteen months later, something changed. Some tactics. A few players. But mostly...

Not friends. Colleagues

There is a particular warmth that fills the room when you are among old friends. The ease. The openness. The permission to say the thing you actually mean. It is a rare and precious thing. Which is exactly why you should not mistake it for what happens at work. Your...

Go. Just go

We do our worst thinking at work. Not because we lack intelligence, but because proximity kills perspective. The urgent crowds out the essential. The tactical devours the strategic. We don’t step away to rest. We step away to see. A founder recently returned...