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Taking a fresh look at innovationWe’ve all probably spent too long in meetings talking about the need for innovation, in many environments the term has been so overused that it’s become a little boring, people switch off, perhaps because like so many ‘words’ it’s become and little meaningless.Innovation still excites me so having chatted with a number of super cool clients recently, I thought I’d share my thoughts on innovation and hopefully re-excite those of you who might have gotten a bit bored with the subject.For me innovation starts with the idea of ‘Demanding the impossible’ — to really innovate I think we have to place ourselves in that place of the ‘impossible’ and then perhaps work backwards towards ‘possible’ having stretched our minds a little or even a lot in the process.It’s certainly clear to me that if we’re going to get beyond just the big words and phrases that describe

Why I chose to focus my career at PwC in Global DevelopmentI’ve been a PwC Partner for over 15 years, today I lead the firm’s relationship globally with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). On the 1st of July 2022 I take on the leadership of our Global International Development sector at PwC.My main areas of expertise are in leading complex multi-year, often multi country Global Development programmes, and in working with leaders to unlock their personal potential and that of their organisations, projects and teams.I’ve written quite a bit about Strength Based Leadership Development, unlocking human and organisational potential, in various blogs and in particular in my new book ‘This is Your Moment’, but I’ve not really explained why I decided to focus my career on Global Development or indeed what Global Development means to me.People are often surprised to hear that PwC has a Global Development business so I tho

You can do it, if you really want to.Way back in 2019, before the world was turned upside down, I was asked to present at a PwC EMEA Marketing and Communications Leaders meeting in Barcelona on the subject of building inclusive leadership teams, of course I found it too hard to resist the offer of going back to one of my favourite cities in the world so I had to say yes.It wasn’t until I arrived in Barcelona that I remembered I’d also agreed to run a social media boot camp, luckily this wasn’t something I needed to create from scratch as my much used ‘20 steps for twitter success’ remain the fundamental tools for my interactions on social media every day, but it did remind me to post those tips for you on here and not just keep them for my special PwC audience, I hope you find them helpful.In many ways the request for the ‘Building diverse leadership teams’ talk came from my original blog ‘The trouble with difference’

It takes you and meWho do you think is going to make the change you are expecting to see in the world? the organiser of the event you’re attending? the person who asked you to be on a panel? the other folks in the audience?Who’s responsible for inclusion, for gender equality, for ethnic diversity, for the equality of the non-white middle class LGBT community, for the awareness and respect of different ways of thinking, learning, being, appearing, different and valuable ways of contributing to life and society, who is responsible to ensure that young and old get an equal voice and equal value and opportunity in the workforce? And who is responsible for reminding us all that we all have mental health and ability challenges so do we need to isolate and keep labelling those that are different to continuously preserve an outdated concept of ‘normal’ when in fact the thing that connects us all is that we are all unique, we are all different — who is going t

Are we equipped to lead diverse teams and diverse organisations?Whilst we’ve still got a long way to go with diversity at work one can’t help feel that the inevitable wave of strong and proudly different people entering organisations is growing, if you don’t get diversity, it’s going to get you, and soon. Whilst the inevitable wave of change sweeping organisations is fantastic, is it enough?Organisations and individuals still seem to be on a diversity ‘journey’, for some just hiring more people that look different appears to be worthy of celebration, and it probably is, alas many of those different people are then taught how to ‘fit it’ and play a traditionally white, straight and male role for survival and success in the professional work environment.For years it seems women have been coached and mentored to ‘play the game’, to be more like the super white men than the white men, to be successful. Many women, black and m