mappingmotivation

Chess and Motivation

Chess can be a very motivating game – at least, I find, when you win! But it’s very painful when you find yourself being ground down and inevitably in a position where you are going to lose. You know it – you can see it from far off – you try to stop it –Continue reading “Chess and Motivation”

My 3 Top Business Tips

I have been in business now for over 17 years and I think I have learnt something. The usual statistics are that somewhere between 60-80% of all businesses go out of businesses within the first five years; and over the next five years a similar number drop out. What then are the three top tipsContinue reading “My 3 Top Business Tips”

Outside In or Inside Out Poetry?

I read a poem recently that was written by a well known – famous even – English poet. The poem had been specially commissioned for a leading charitable organisation that was dealing with poverty and homelessness. To be fair, the poem was interesting – on its own terms. What he had done was artfully constructContinue reading “Outside In or Inside Out Poetry?”

Motivation, teams and Woolworths

Back in December 2008 I remember walking down from Glastonbury Tor into the main town with my wife. We had taken a short break in Glastonbury and were enjoying ourselves. As we came into the main town I spotted a Woolworths store on the right side of the road and crossed to have a look;Continue reading “Motivation, teams and Woolworths”

Motivation and the wild wild sea

Finally, I launch myself in – into the gentle waves and I am immersed in the freezing cold. My hands especially feel it – my core tries to resist. But what joy as the current takes me, and as I flip and flop and attempt this stroke and then that, and know I am back. Yes, back from the sunless rooms and corridors and into the light and into the sea. The wild, wild sea – turbulent as all my motivations, inspiring me to live, provoking me to embrace the wholeness, the wideness of every uncontrollable atom of existence.

Three Priority Problems for HR

HR needs to develop a deeper understanding of why people go to work and why they stay. And they need to move away from scarcity models that simply predicate that people work only for money, or only because they need a job. People, given a chance, are much more complex than that.

The Three Priority Decisions of Your Life

All decisions have consequences, so this blog is not minimising the importance of carefully considering any choice you have to make. But in the scheme of things the Pareto Principle applies: 80% of decisions are pretty low grade, and on 20% of our decisions big outcomes depend.

Why Leaders Need Personal Development

What is leadership? As Dr Johnson observed about light, it’s easy to see what light is, but not so easy to say what it is; so with leadership – we can easily see its positive presence – and the dire consequence of its absence – but to say what it is proves more tricky.

Thinking About Appraisal and Making it Work

Appraisal is such a good idea and it is founded on such solid psychological principles that it is a wonder it has such a bad reputation, and that it fails to deliver so frequently. It was WE Deming, the great quality guru, who said that it took the average American six months to recover fromContinue reading “Thinking About Appraisal and Making it Work”

Assessing Yourself

The world can be a bleak place. Of course, there are always those, in Ian McDonald’s wonderful phrase, who “live lives of sweet and seamless gold”; for whom privilege and a sense of entitlement irrespective of merit smooth the way. But for the rest of us there are problems. One core source of problems comesContinue reading “Assessing Yourself”