Diversions Manifold

The other night I was reading my 3 year-old a bed-time story from one of our favourite series of childrens' stories, Arnold Lobel's "Frog and Toad" collection, when this little exchange between the two got me thinking: {Frog's List has blown away in the wind} "Hurry!" said Frog. "We will run and catch it." "No!" shouted Toad. "I cannot do that.! "Why not?" asked Frog. "Because," wailed Toad, "running after my list is not one of the things that I wrote on my list of things to do!" This resonates with so much of business life; procedures, workflows, instructions, audits, filling out forms. We all have lists of things to do, from our (largely ignored and occasionally conscious-pricking) task lists, to those procedures.  We need to realise that we can make the choice between "merely" following the procedures to the letter, and rehumanising them. Naturally, this all applies to the bur

I returned to work yesterday after two months off on paternity leave following Emily's birth in July. Those two months of wearing shorts, not trousers, T-shirts not shirts were (Emily's virus aside) wonderful. Towards the end of my leave, I started thinking about and investigating the world of work again - discovering interesting buzzwords like "social enterprise" and "curation" brought up concepts that I was keen to try to implement in our office. I also checked my work emails to make sure that I wasn't going to be overwhelmed when I got back. Whilst checking up on my work emails from home, I noticed a slight reaction of repulsion as soon as I saw a drawing of one of our tube products - this continued when I returned to being "live" at work, too. It's not the greatest sign for motivation, although the holiday blues are bound to be at work. I fear my lofty ideas will not survive being dragged down to the product level, into the muck and