Creativity and Collaboration
Where do you go for inspiration about creativity (and collaboration)? When I visit London, I ALWAYS try to find time to visit the Tate Modern…. it’s such an inspiring place for me. And when I’m there, one of my highlights is to visit this piece of art, The Snail by Matisse. (1953) A couple of […]
Trust in Intergenerational Collaboration
In 2026, would you like to contribute to a book about ‘Skillful Collaboration’? Barnabé Regan said YES!! And sent me this…—Trust in Intergenerational Collaboration. It is the beginning of August, 2023. I am on a family holiday with my parents and younger brother in Bayonne, a small city in Southwestern France. I was 17 years […]
Sharing
What would you love to share in 2026?&How can sharing become a bigger part of Team collaboration? During the Christmas time we ‘spent’ a wonderful time in England with the family. Actually, ‘spent’ is maybe not the appropriate word, although of course lots is SPENT at Christmas time. Let’s start again. During the christmas time […]
Skillful Collaboration Model
Collaboration simply means working together. It comes from the Latin words col, meaning together, and labore, meaning to work. Skillful means the ability to do something well. Developing skills is essentially about practice. In our organizations, we are constantly asked and expected to collaborate. But have we ever truly learned how to collaborate? When collaborating, […]
Play
When we were kids growing up in our part of Yorkshire, long before the age of smartphones, we would ‘connect’ with our mates by running from house to house, banging on the door and asking, “Are you laiking out?” Laiking comes from the Old Norse word leika, meaning “to play.” This word brings back wonderful […]
A Thanks Giving Message
Today is Thanksgiving in the US, so I’d like to start by saying Happy Thanksgiving to all my mates from and in the US. I really love the idea of a whole nation of people taking pause to celebrate and give thanks — to be grateful for the good things in life. In my book, […]
Good Team Vibes
How do you design your meetings to have a clear intention?And how do you shape your agenda to consider the energy in the room? Last week, I was preparing to facilitate a meeting with a client team in a large multinational organisation. The team has a new team leader who joined a couple of months […]
Culture
I love visiting different places and different countries to taste, feel, or just experience their cultures. A friend of mine visited Taiwan this week, where I’ve never been. “Everything is fluid there,” he told me. I’ve worked in China, Japan, and South Korea, and visited Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore in Asia too… such different places, […]
Let’s Debate
When I hear terms such as Healthy Conflict, Fierce Conversations, or Atomic Habits, I feel myself close down. My body literally contracts. Maybe it’s my natural / learnt freeze response to words like conflict, fierce, or atomic. Or maybe it’s simply fatigue from the war-like noise in our world and the constant competing polarities we […]
Product or Service?
Imagine you’re working on two automotive parts projects. On one, you’ve got a critical technical issue that must be solved before shipping it for the OEM vehicle build the next day. On the other, for a different customer, you have a meeting to finalise the agreement before they sign the purchase order for the next […]