Leaders need to be optimistic (even when they don’t feel like it)
We’ve had two Christmases now that have been disrupted by surges in coronavirus, which refuses to stick to any sort of script. Yet all this hardship and uncertainty has only reinforced the need for leaders to stay optimistic. People need to believe that their efforts aren’t going to be in vain. They need hope and […]
Your growth checklist for 2022
There is a downside of busyness though, which is that you spend so much time working in the business that you neglect to work on the business. This can be particularly difficult in sectors like hospitality that keep getting plunged into crisis mode, but it’s all the more important as a result. It’s also something […]
5 Christmas books for a thoughtful leader
Leaders, in particular, struggle when everything seems to be a priority, and their family and personal lives can suffer as a result. It may seem difficult to justify reading a book when there’s so much else to do, but for leaders there are few things more important than stretching the mind and seeking out new, […]
What does hybrid working mean for the high street?
If you had to tell the economic story of the early 2020s through one object, you’d be hard pressed to beat a hastily-torn Amazon package. The tech giant posted sales of $332bn in the first nine months of this year alone, meaning it’s now 11 times bigger than it was a decade ago and is […]
Consumer behaviour: Is this the era of mass personalisation?
In this article, we explore the different ways businesses are innovating to meet this demand in retail, hospitality and other consumer sectors, and examine what it takes to do personalisation well. In the history of taste, mass production is an aberration. All other things being equal, consumers have always wanted bespoke products and services that […]
We need to celebrate entrepreneurs – but remember they’re human
In popular culture, they actually have much more in common with footballers, music artists and YouTubers, all of which reflect the ideal of escaping normal life and achieving overnight fame and fortune. At the same time, entrepreneurs are frequently presented as a breed apart, particularly in tech – world-changing stars displaying a superhuman vision and […]
Will consumers pay for sustainability?
So wrote the Guardian – in 2008. People have said they cared about the environment for years, but the truth is it hasn’t led to irresistible commercial pressure to go green. Most of us are still happy to drive gas-guzzling SUVs, eat South American strawberries in January, and jet around the world whenever we get […]
What graduates really want from jobs
A lot of people talk on behalf of graduates, usually reeling off survey statistics to reveal what they really want from their first significant jobs and how that’s different from previous generations. Four in five consider corporate purpose highly important to their choice of employer, for example, while 25% plan to run a company of […]
Will you make staff wear masks?
Freedom Day has a ring to it, in a Daily Mail front page kind of way, and it’s easy to see why everyone’s looking forward to it so much. No one likes being told what to do, particularly if it’s burdensome – and 16 months of mask-wearing and maintaining frankly unnatural degrees of personal space […]
5 books for leaders during LGBT Pride
A central feature of inclusive leadership is the capacity to understand the people you lead, and empathise with their experiences. That’s hard to do from a distance. Most of us will have LGBT employees, in many cases in large numbers, and any effort to be inclusive of them will necessarily begin by listening to them. […]
