As we approach Christmas the annual marathon of giving and receiving cards has already started – and I continue to object! Not in a ‘Scrudge-like’ manner – rejecting the Spirit of Christmas in it’s entirety, but in a more selective way – the giving and receiving of cards to people we see all year round […]
Yesterday we said farewell to a colleague who started with me 25 years ago. For them the time was right. Management did a nice presentation at the start of the day and her friends and colleagues put on a wonderful informal lunch. Inevitably the conversation turned to the parallel subjects of Why now? and What […]
Introducing change… When I worked in financial services we developed a computer simulation that allowed us to share experience of setting up a sales organisation with countries that were about to start the journey. In the simulation we included a genuine memo we had found while researching the exercise. It was from ‘senior management’ saying […]
When coaching others, I use an analogy of the decks of an old galleon where the lowest deck was called an orlop while the captain spent his time up on the bridge. In truth, when charting our way through life we all spend time on every deck – sometimes doing the reassuringly mundane chores of […]
For the first time in nearly 40 years there are no desktop computers in use at home, and, come to think of it, apart from an old TV recorder, there are no disc drives either. In parallel, along with much of the country, we are about to switch over from those two tiny copper wires […]
That ‘a-ha’ moment… Recently a client captured the essence of what we do: ‘Now get it… at some point I will no longer be here. What EML is asking me to focus on everything I can control between now and then. While our discussions are structured around your six core areas, my success comes from […]
I’ve been watching Dan Buettner’s series on how to live to 100 (the secrets of the Blue Zone). He focus is on the importance of creating the right environment and he shows how originally this happened by chance, but through careful nurturing similar results can be achieved anywhere. He also shows how easy it to […]
A life skill for many people over 50 is being able, both physically and emotionally, to contain their ‘stuff’. Wartime austerity nurtured a caution against parting with anything ‘just in case’ which then extended into and beyond the ‘throwaway’ society of the 60s and 70s. Is there anyone over 70 who doesn’t have at least […]
A recent article in the financial press highlighted the perils of ‘gifts with reservations’ citing the Inland Revenue guidance on what constitutes a reservation. The rule that made me smile was borrowing more than three books a month from a ‘gifted personal library’- I remember driving around every charity shop in the county trying g […]
Decisions – decisions Increasingly, I am aware of a difference between the ‘very wealthy’ and the rest of us. When it comes to possessions, they know exactly what they want, and don’t hold on to anything else. Growing up in a household familiar with post war austerity I was indoctrinated with the full set of […]