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LONDON — This past 10 days we saw the investiture of both a new Pope and a new Archbishop of Canterbury (the heads of the Catholic and Anglican Christian churches). That doesn’t happen very often. In both instances they run traditional institutions facing substantial challenges and changes. So we can look at them to see how a new ‘CEO’ can drive change. [...] LONDON — Like being on holiday when your house is broken into, watching politics unfold in my home town of Montreal and across the province of Quebec is unhealthy. You imagine things that aren’t true. You worry about what might have happened, and hold out hope in vain for things that might not. Then the reality is both better and worse [...] PICCADILLY — Okay, I’ll have a go. “Yahoo! hires pregnant CEO” …is a good headline. And the articles that follow are food for thought as well. There are, of course, the requisite quotes about never hiring women of an age to be having children. There is also the fact that in the United States of America, where the Yahoo! CEO will [...] CHELSEA — You’ll have to ask my friend Chris. I told him at lunch yesterday that I thought Bob Diamond had done himself in with his letter to employees on Monday. By last night that was being reported. I have seen a lot of letters to employees and Mr Diamond’s just didn’t hit the right notes. It felt like it [...] LONDON — There are several converging thoughts in this article. All of which are probably likely to get me in trouble. For this is a topic that we should be able to talk about, but many forces conspire against it. As background to this, there are a few things going on in the business. We are interviewing right now. I am [...] LONDON — It’s been a busy few months. Apologies for not having written sooner. When there is a lot on you sometimes don’t get the thoughts through to the page. A stack of un-posted blogs litter my inbox. I don’t want to confuse you about brand. Able and How is not a ‘brand’ business. But because we are almost always concerned with [...] 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 [...] |
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