History Lessons
History Lessons examines what it was that set the great leaders of history apart from their contemporaries and enabled their dramatic successes. The book’s chapters explore core aspects of leadership, such as Boldness of Vision, Changing the Mood, Bringing People with You and Taking the Offensive.
100 Great Leadership Ideas
The list of attributes and behavioural skills needed by any modern leader is dauntingly long. 100 Great Leadership Ideas uses the collective wisdom of over 130 outstanding modern leaders to select and present the most significant leadership ideas, concepts and practices that have been proven to work in today’s business environment.
Blindsided
Human beings, it seems safe to say, are irredeemably selfish, greedy, short-sighted and prone to mass delusion. Time and again throughout history, business and society have been blindsided by people’s irrational and unpredictable behaviour. How could that happen? How could we have been so stupid?Â
RECENT Leadership Ideas
Be Decisive – Great Leadership Idea No. 62
Change involves risk, and there will never be enough information to guarantee that you have made the right...
RECENT Culture
Why aren’t we more worried about flu pandemics? The neuroscience of unreasonable optimism
A disease that killed more people than the First World War. As the 1914-18 First World War entered its...
RECENT Leaders from History
Genghis Khan: creating a nation and an empire
In the West, the name of Genghis Khan still fills us with an almost instinctive dread. The Mongol horde...
Archbishop Welby is wrong about leadership
In his Easter sermon, Archbishop Welby warned against the ‘hero leader culture’ and told his congregation that...
April 2nd, 1801. ‘I see no ships’: Horatio Nelson turns a blind eye at the Battle of Copenhagen
Horatio Nelson is featured in Section 4 of History Lessons: Leading from the Front. Horatio Nelson, who would become...
Martin Lindstrom’s Brandwashed doesn’t seem to know what a brand is
I don’t normally give books bad reviews. This is because I only have time to read books about subjects that...
Rich Americans good; poor Americans bad. Charles Murray is Coming Apart.
I have been reading some of the flakier right wing American thinkers, mainly for entertainment, but also because I am...
Napoleon’s Whiff of Grapeshot
posted on: Apr 1, 2012
In the later phase of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte – then a mere Brigadier General (who had, in fact, recently been struck off by the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety and was therefore technically an ex-Brigadier General) famously said that he had used ‘a whiff of grapeshot’ when he repulsed a Royalist mob who, in 1795,...
Citizens United: corporations are not associations of citizens
posted on: Mar 19, 2012
In 2010, a ruling by the Supreme Court of America in the now notorious Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money as ‘independent expenditures’ on political advertising, arguing that to prohibit these organisations from doing this (as did the previous, relatively...
Napoleon first demonstrates his leadership skills: The Siege of Toulon
posted on: Mar 7, 2012
Napoleon’s first opportunity to demonstrate his exceptional leadership skills came with the French Revolution – the dramatic social upheaval that swept away all of France’s previous power structures and hierarchies, giving this apparently unremarkable young man the opportunity to step onto the world stage. The young student from...
Terence Conran’s Habitat: changing lifestyles in 1960s Britain
posted on: Feb 17, 2012
The current Terence Conran exhibition at the London Design Museum reminds us of the startling impact that Habitat had on the tastes and lifestyles of Britons in the 1960s. As The Guardian’s video contribution to the current wave of Conran reportage says, ‘He transformed the high street!’ It’s true. Shopping for furniture and interior...
Apple strikes deal with Microsoft – forging strategic partnerships
posted on: Jan 13, 2012
After their death, people’s reputations begin to eclipse the real facts of their lives. ‘Steve Jobs fired as Apple chairman’ and ‘Steve Jobs strikes pragmatic deal with Microsoft’ are not the sort of sub-heads you find in most of the obituaries. Apple versus Microsoft Steve Jobs was the genius who founded Apple Inc, the quirky, creative...
Cameron’s EU stance shows (dangerously) decisive leadership
posted on: Dec 11, 2011
Whatever you may think about the politics of David Cameron’s decision to play the ‘no’ card at the European Union summit by vetoing moves to use the current European treaty to endorse greater fiscal unity of the eurozone nations, that decisive moment has had one undeniable effect: Cameron’s leadership credentials have suddenly received a...
Options and consensus – Great Leadership Idea No. 35
posted on: Sep 20, 2011
Change is implemented more quickly and successfully when alternative options have been discussed in advance, and when the team as a whole has reached a consensus decision on the right way forward. Consensus also helps ensure that the people who are closest to the likely results of a decision get to make their voices heard. The idea Sir John...
Give people autonomy – Great Leadership Idea No 31
posted on: Jun 10, 2011
Successful leaders offer substantial autonomy to members of the team and to parts of the business. Individuals are empowered, and respond to this; decision-making is de-centralised, bringing more opinion and directly relevant experience into the process and, ideally, bringing decision-making closer to the customer. Whole units can be allowed to...
Zero tolerance and the staff kitchen – Great Leadership Idea No 60
posted on: May 4, 2011
If the tap in the staff kitchen is broken and nobody mends it, colleagues quite quickly begin to draw a number of very negative conclusions—in particular, that management isn’t particularly bothered about the welfare or comfort of the staff and that, since management don’t fix things that are broken in the staff’s day-to-day...
Giving colleagues reasons to feel proud: the Greg Dyke Way
posted on: Mar 30, 2011
In an earlier blog Greg Dyke and John Birt: lessons in leadership I explored the dramatic difference in leadership style between two previous Director Generals of the BBC: John Birt, and his successor, Greg Dyke. I used this case history recently in a morning session on leadership development at Oxford Saïd Business School, and it reminded me of...
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