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LONDON — We’re crashing into Christmas. Like everyone else. Lurking in shop doorways on Dec 24th and thinking “I said I’d never do this again.” It’s been an odd and uncomfortable week amongst men in the UK though. The dominant pagan religion of football has seen people talking about “goodwill toward men”, but in reverse. What qualifies as “lacking goodwill” and what [...]
DOHA, QATAR — We’re working on four different ‘transformation programmes’ at the moment. Combined they are on three continents, in over 30 countries. You would think that would provide some shocking contrasts. But it does something quite different. It shows startling similarities. Everything has superficial differences: language, geography, industry, structure… Yes, those can seem superficial. The issues in big business transformation generally fall into [...] BAHRAIN — This is my first time in Bahrain. That leaves only really Oman in the area that I haven’t been to / worked in. United Arab Emirates? It’s a part of the world that many people can’t (or choose not to) understand. In the last three weeks [...] WEST LONDON — There’s a hording around the big, refurbished church at Hammersmith flyover that says TRANSFORMATIONSPACE. The hordings in the photo above are at the base of the new Shard of Glass building at London Bridge. What are they on about? The words ‘change’ and ‘transformation’ are starting to gain some currency in business circles these days. Many, many large companies [...] FITZROVIA – Batman Syndrome* is when you have achieved all sorts of fame and fortune, and regular life holds no challenges, so you start to do anti-social, dangerous things. In the case of Bruce Wayne it’s putting you knickers outside you tights and fighting crime. In the cases of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn [...] CROMWELL ROAD — There was a little girl with her dad on the bus today. She cried the whole trip. “I don’t like the teachers…! I don’t want to go…! I want my MOMMY…!!” That kind of crying that is so deep and, after a while, so filled with mucus that breathing is affected. The adults shifted uncomfortably. Because half [...] TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD — Or so says Andy Gill in today’s Independent review of new records. And what a week it is. A new Elbow album. A new REM one too. And a third from Noah and The Whale. All well reviewed. Any one of those would be good enough to [...]
WORLD’S END — I hadn’t realised how odd an address this is to be writing from. But maybe it’s fitting. 30+ years ago I arrived at a boarding school in rural Ontario. I had been living the previous two years in Paris and two years before that in Kenya. While still a Canadian, I was a smart-ass, and a French-fueled nihilist. The Cold War [...] OXFORD STREET — Okay you’re not running Egypt. But imagine you were. Or let’s be clearer. You have been given a new project: Get that Egypt thing sorted out. Easy, right? They made it through the frogs and locusts, etc. No, okay. Seriously. (And apologise in advance to the people who are working hard to bring change to that country.) But what [...] GREAT PORTLAND STREET — I’ve got nothing new to add to the sexism discussion at Sky Sports… except for those who think the lads were just having a laugh, or boys will be boys, it is worth taking the sobering ”Sexism at work” test found in today’s Independent (sadly not available online). What I am more interested in today [...] |
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