Heartwork

These words spoken by Director of The London School of Economics, Minouche Shafik, in an interview last year ring true: ‘In the past jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in future they’ll be about the heart.’ The truth is our best work always has been about the heart. And the good news…

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Be A Powerful And Purposeful Storyteller

*The following post is an extract from my new book The Right Story.* Throughout history, the technology of the day has always influenced how its users communicate and share ideas. How we think about spreading ideas is shaped by the resources available to us. How we connect and persuade is affected by the way we…

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Be Ambitious

In our culture ambition is both celebrated and frowned upon—not always in equal measure. Ambition is encouraged and rewarded, but only to a point. Perhaps it’s not ambition itself that’s the problem, but rather, our narrow definition of it? We aspire mostly to the ambition of accumulation. We want to be more and have more.…

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The Upside Of Generosity

The waitress supervising breakfast at the hotel was doing a great job of doing her job. The coffee pots and bread baskets were full. Dirty tables were promptly cleared, and not a single customer had complained that morning. She kept herself busy as the minutes to the end of her shift ticked by. The couple…

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More Customers Vs. More For Customers

Every business begins with the founder’s intention about the outcome he or she wants to achieve. Every aspect of its development stems from that original intent. As businesses owners, leaders and creators, we can adopt one of two strategies. We can build a business with the intention of getting more customers, or we can want…

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One Of The Few

Few organisations look past the data to see the humanity of the client behind the numbers. Few companies act as if it’s a privilege to serve their customers. Few people take time to listen twice as much as they speak. Few products are made with love. In a world where we are doing our best…

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The Best Fit

Sometimes we take on projects or clients that are a bad fit. Work that doesn’t energise us or customers that don’t value us. It’s hard to pay attention to the reasons why things aren’t working out when you’re knee-deep in the situation. But it’s important to try. We discover how we work best by paying…

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Sell It Like You Made It

The days when you could go down to the Milofsky’s Hardware supplies, and come away with a couple of screws carefully wrapped in brown paper, which were perfect for the job, are long gone. The days when Mrs O’Hanlon didn’t mind taking this heavy glass jar, then that one, down from the shelves of her sweet…

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Transactions Vs. Experiences

The hotel was nothing to write home about. You couldn’t really fault it either. The facilities, which matched the hotel’s star rating were as described. The room was clean. The bed was comfortable. The staff were efficient and polite. But—you knew there was a ‘but’ coming. The place lacked a spirit of generosity. It had…

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Profit And…

My mother started working over sixty years ago. As the tenth child of a widow, with nothing more than a basic education she had very few choices. She could be a seamstress or a replaceable cog on the assembly line at one of any number of factories. Sadly the factory jobs won because those jobs…

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