Articles and Thought Leadership

After the Pandemic
The struggle for survival The 5 years following the coronavirus lockdown, the post pandemic period, will be characterised by struggles between powerful forces – a Clash of Titans. “Could the renewed shock of human vulnerability in the face … Continue reading

Life Cycles
Everything is connected Because everything is connected, its good to have more than one book on the go at any time. Reading two books and discovering connections between them can be rather revealing. In effect it sets up … Continue reading

Mindfulness Matters
Mindfulness and Wellness are becoming increasingly popular in society. Nowadays, many more people are interested in yoga, pilates, meditation, visualisation, etc for personal reasons. However, as these disciplines enter the mainstream, they are penetrating into the world of … Continue reading

Change is in the air! A new year and a new government with new initiatives!
Make the most of the opportunities for a fresh start. This is the time to get off-site to think, in order to approach this uncertain future with confidence. For this, High Trenhouse provides the ideal environment – comfortable, … Continue reading

Leadership as Meaning-Making – The Hero’s Journey
Leadership as Meaning-Making is the title of an article I wrote a decade ago, that Emerald posted on https://www.academia.edu/. It seems to get a lot of hits. Who doesn’t want their life and work to be meaningful? Many … Continue reading

Workplace Trends
John Varney was invited by Logovisual to run a “Future Trends Wall” at the Workplace Trends conference in London. The conference attracted an international audience of around 200 people who enjoyed a series of expert presentations of the … Continue reading

Aligning strategy, vision and purpose
Strategy, vision and purpose are not new inventions. Once upon a time people were in charge of their own work. Although it was mostly manual toil, people could take pride in their labour which brought satisfaction. With industrialisation labour … Continue reading

A Deeper Kind of Leadership
Number 4 of 4. We should note that although algorithms and robots threaten to make us all redundant, they have no leadership skills and cannot form teams. They can displace us in linear systems but not in organic … Continue reading

Teamwork and Leadership
Number 3 of 4. In addition to those confusions about leadership being the preserve of a few we also have confusions about teamwork. In our ordinary language we would suppose that the leadership team is a team of … Continue reading

Mechanism or organism?
Number 2 of 4. Writing in Resurgence magazine, Herbert Gerardet, co-founder of the World Future Council, points out that mechanical systems tend to be linear whereas natural systems are cyclic. Transfer this principle to organisations and we can … Continue reading