Last night I was at Wigmore Hall listening to a concert given by Iestyn Davies (countertenor) and Thomas Dunford (lute) and, not for the first time, I reflected on my musical likes and dislikes. My wife and I often go to Wigmore — certainly once a week, sometimes twice — so I have plenty of time to mull things over. Particularly so this week when, in addition to last night’s concert, I will have listened to music performed at […]
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After writing hundreds of published articles and almost 40 books, booklets and manuals I have had only three real disappointments. The first was when Face to Face, my first solo book was published in 1976. The publishers, The Institute of Personnel Management, had promised to consult me about the design for the cover. I had even volunteered to submit some designs myself but, since they had a longstanding contract with a graphic designer, this was declined. As the publication […]
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‘Ever played croquet?’ a friend once asked me one day in 1971 during a lunch break at country house being used as a management training centre. I sniggered, assuming croquet was a sedentary game only played by old people on vicarage lawns. ‘Of course not!’ ‘Well,’ said my friend, ‘You’re missing a treat. Let me show you.’ In a dark space under the stairs, amongst vacuum cleaners, buckets and mops, we found a croquet set in a Jacques wooden box. […]
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- 19 February 2020
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Some weeks ago, St Thomas’ Hospital kindly invited me to attend for a cataract operation. However, events conspired to get me there 48 hours early. Quite unexpectedly, on Saturday 15 February, I woke up with a dreadful tummy ache. I rang 111 and was given an appointment at a GP Hub in Vauxhall. A solemn doctor, working over the weekend, told me I probably had appendicitis and should go to A&E immediately. By lunchtime I was in Urgent Care, submitting […]
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- 5 September 2019
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I see that meetings are getting a bad press again. A new survey has found that nearly a million people spend half their working week in meetings and that at least a third of that time is wasted waiting for late-comers. Waiting for late-comers is crazy; it punishes the people who have taken the trouble to arrive on time and fails to inconvenience those who haven’t. Indeed, waiting for late-comers actually trains people not to arrive on time; why bother […]
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