We all have the same amount of time, but we also know that within that time we can get more or less done depending on our energy levels. And yet we tend to look at the clock a lot more than we pay attention to our energy account; we try to manage time when we'd be better managing our energy. Dr Alan Watkins offers a useful technique to help with this in his book, Coherence: The secret science of brilliant leadership. His work is based on the idea of coherence: "in essence, the...

Towards the end of his memoir, Shoe Dog, Nike founder Phil Knight tells of a conversation with the CEO of Nissho, Masuro Hayami. He describes him as "Perhaps the wisest man I ever knew". As they sat in a hot tub after a barbecue in the backyard of Hayami's beach house near Atami, Japan, Knight was complaining about the challenges he faced at Nike even after taking the Nike company public. "We have so much opportunity," he told Hayami. "But we're having a ...

Around this time of year I often ask people I'm coaching to think about their "hits, misses, and wishes". It's a simple way of taking a snapshot of the year and framing some celebration, learning and planning in the transition to a new year. So ... What have been your "hits" this year? The things that have gone well, that have been successful, that you would mark down as achievements? What are you proud of? How have you improved? This morning I recei...

Identifying, pursuing and enabling positive change presents a critical challenge for both individuals and organisations. On the one hand, we know that change, improvement and adaptation are critical. The world around us isn't standing still waiting for us to be comfortable with change. Stagnation and sameness breed irrelevance and decline. On the other hand, change and imagination invoke risk and the potential for another sort of failure. On the one hand, we are innately creative a...

"It's not uncommon to find that 20% to 40% of the acts and activities of leaders at all three levels [top, middle, frontline] provide only questionable value to those above and below them. It's also not uncommon to find that leaders are underinvesting in 20% to 40% of the acts and activities that interviewees at their level cite as important." That means one to two days of effort per week every week is misdirected, wasted or neglected. That has to come at a cost. And ...