I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how crisis and opportunity go hand in hand. In the worst and most cold-hearted version of this, there are companies exploiting the current crisis in ways that are simply unconscionable. But for the rest of us, the shock to the system of the coronavirus pandemic, the lockdown and […]
In several conversations with colleagues and peers recently I have found myself invoking the Eisenhower Matrix, a grid often used in time management. It originates from a quote by Eisenhower: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” Evolving from this […]
Having run with a flexible working approach at Fountain since we hired our first employee ten years ago, I’ve recently been asked to share how we have made it work for us. And because it’s one of those things (like so many!) that we got wrong before we got right, I’m definitely happy to share […]
It’s the new year, and we have a lot of exciting plans in motion. At the very top of my personal list, and my super-exciting project for the spring, is a revamp of our company values. Fluffy (and to some extent tired) though it may sound, we are a hugely values-driven organisation. From our recruitment […]
I’m preparing to speak on the Women in Leadership panel at Google’s Partner Summit in New York next week. One of the questions they circulated was about how to “walk the walk” of gender equality in business, instead of just “talking the talk”. As I pondered this question, I realise that we do exactly the […]
We’ve recently introduced TinyPulse as a micro-surveying tool at Fountain, and within the first few weeks it had delivered amazing insight that really helped us become a better workplace. TinyPulse sends a single question to our team each week – there are a load of suggested questions in the system, but questions can […]
To err is human. In his book “Black Box Thinking”, Matthew Syed investigates how the airline industry is exemplary in using information from those rare instances that something has gone wrong to improve their systems. Instead of covering up or brushing off mistakes, they interrogate them to prevent them from happening again. When […]
In his book “59 Seconds – Think A Little, Change A Lot”, psychologist Richard Wiseman summarises the latest research into what makes people happy, motivated, creative and successful in a broad range of other areas. It’s an interesting book that takes a very scientific view and aims to bust the myths of pop psychology, […]