How to fail (as an employer, organisation, government, leader, Prime Minister, etc.)…

A few years ago I wrote a book called ‘Managing People in Organisations’ (Amazon link here) – I like to think that it’s pretty good and, my own trumpet blowing aside, it represents a thorough review of the best practices in keeping people engaged at Read More …

Making teams work: Increasing cooperation and productivity by removing primate politics…

Any of you who’ve spent time working in a large organisation will be familiar with the seeming need for (what feels like) endless meetings. In fact, working with and in groups is an inescapable fact of pretty much all organised work. Occasionally, this experience can Read More …

Performing under pressure: What you need to know…

Some of you probably know that I’m trained as a sport psychologist, and spent four years running a Masters’ degree in Sport and Performance Psychology in London. During that time, I designed what I believed to be a cutting-edge course, had it ratified and accredited Read More …

Is elite athlete “arrogance” a performance hack? Part 3 (When hubris becomes sociopathy)

This week I’m going to continue the articles on athletic arrogance as a performance hack. Initially, this line of thinking came from my speculations about how we hack our neurological limitations, using behavioural ‘software patches’, to increase our ability to perform. In this case, I Read More …

Is elite athlete “arrogance” a performance hack? Part 2 (When arrogance becomes hubris)

Last week I wrote about elite athlete “arrogance” with the suggestion that it’s actually a learned performance hack to help athletes trust “expert systems” under pressure. The more I thought about this though, the more I realised that it’s not just used by athletes, and that Read More …