Where life and work collide
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Stressed out? Try the one next thing.
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star” – Stephen Hawking.
I think it was supposed to put our troubles into perspective, but sometimes events can be overwhelming…
Need time to lead? Don’t give a monkey’s
Happy Birthday to me!
To celebrate, I am sharing an idea based on an HBR piece published the year I was born called Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?
Authority: it’s a man’s world.
This week, two women asked for my advice on how to tackle being talked over at work. This made it the perfect time to ask journalist and radio presenter Mary Ann Sieghart about her new book, The Authority Gap. Why women are still taken less seriously than men and what to do about it.
Can a £26 burger predict who returns to the office?
On Sunday night, a friend took me to the NoMad hotel in Covent Garden for the most perfect burger and Negroni. The place was the very definition of the draw of cities: a dramatic magistrates’ court, a luscious red velvet and leather library (with genuine books), and an oval marble bar that Jay Gatsby should’ve been draped against, cigarette in hand.
Don’t waste limbo: there’s much to be done!
The government has delayed the end of restrictions: 28 days later indeed.
For me this extra time drifting between the end of lockdown and reopening feels flat. Like the time between A-levels and results when you’re waiting for life to start. Interspersed only by dramatic announcements from the likes of Morgan Stanley chief, James Gorman, threatening to “change his tone” if people don’t return to five days a week in September.
How much do people like you?
And how much do you actually care? As I’ve grown up, I’ve become reasonably comfortable with being a ‘Marmite’ character that a certain percentage of people can’t stand. It doesn’t bother me at all. But I know many women, and some men, who don’t feel the same way.
WFH: Not so flexible after all
Will hybrid work actually demand more leadership control?
The question was raised in an article in the Harvard Business Review, by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, based on surveying 30,000 American employees.
The new digital etiquette we’re all being judged on
According to The Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, we misinterpret the tone of half of the emails we receive. Yep, for one in every two messages, we are totally missing the vibe. No wonder everyone is feeling a touch paranoid.
When you SHOULD work for free
I’m often confronted with the question: when is it a good idea to work for free?
There’s a LOT of heat online about why you should not work unpaid. Especially women. Especially if offered ‘exposure’ in return. (Scroll through ForExposure’s feed on Twitter for shocking stories of why people should invest their skills in projects with zero budgets.) Makes total sense, right?
How we stop work from killing us
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week and the focus is on nature. Cue posts about going for another 🤬 walk in the park.
Research published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that premature aging and death were impacted by:
- battling industry downturns
- the threat of takeovers
- …and pandemics too?
(Based on 1,605 company bosses at large publicly listed US firms over the last 50 years)
The most powerful leadership advice I was ever given
15 years ago the ad agency I was working at, BBDO, flew a bunch of us to LA to talk strategy for three days in a cavernous hotel. My main memory is of escaping a formal dinner for a bar crawl in stretch limos.
What makes YOU prone to burn out?
One Monday morning in an agency, a colleague came into my office, slumped, and cried.
And cried.
He’d been working for weeks—and all weekend—for a difficult client. He was, I now know, burnt out: suffering a collapse of physical and emotional energy. I should have seen the signs and intervened much earlier.
What Gen Z thinks of you
Gen Z, aka the Zoomers, were (disputably) born between 1997 and 2012. So they’re currently under 25—and shockingly—include my oldest child. The younger two are Alphas (tell me something I didn’t know).
Staying sane(ish) through the great unlock: 5 tips
I went into this thing looking like a woman who hosts parties. I was snapped on Sunday looking like a dognapper who eats from skips.
One year on: can we bounce back better?
Exactly a year into this vlog, it’s happening—the great (slow) unlock. Three thoughts for you:
Age: the last bastion of discrimination?
What #IWD isn't about
I struggled with #IWD this year. Obviously not the bits about celebrating great women or schools going back—oh no, they were ace…
Are we going back to Mad Men?
Looking better than everyone else on Zoom?
Well here we are, a year into this crisis, and yet we still have a lot of people—obviously not you dear reader, but your colleagues—with shocking Zoom set ups.
