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Do you ever have those days where you work frenetically, but go home feeling “I got nothing done today?” So many of the clients I work with are overwhelmed.  They get to the end of one task: there are tens more waiting. So they start with the smaller things (because that shortens

I saw a cartoon recently that made me laugh out loud. It was a drawing of a chicken and an egg lying in bed, happy, relaxed, smoking. The caption? “Well, that clears that up!”. Working in organisations, I come across a lot of talk about values: senior management are working them out and communicating

A little exercise I sometimes do with senior teams: I ask each person to write down what they see as the team’s top three priorities – and then we compare notes. It’s a great exercise because (a) it brings people into a reflective space and (b) it shows just how clear

I’ve always been slightly uncomfortable with the “there’s no ‘I’ in team” mantra. I get what it’s trying to do – to remove ego, to put the team before self. And I agree with that. But in the phrase, I also read a subtle undercurrent of ‘individuals don’t matter – don’t rock the boat’. Teams

One of the things we are good at in Ireland is funerals. Whether a death is ‘a blessed relief’ or desperately sad and unexpected, we bury people well. Funerals are held within a few days of death. The deceased will be ‘waked’, on view in their Sunday best, with visitors bringing food, washing

I love that silly old joke about the driver who is lost and stops to ask a local for directions. “If I was you,” says the local “I wouldn’t start from here”. Organisations ask a lot of their teams – “please work in this slightly unclear matrix structure while we initiate constant