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When did you as a business leader last systematically assess the state of health of your organisation? I don’t mean its financial state – I bet you check on that all the time. Nor do I mean the structures, systems, policies, legal compliance and other concrete issues, that I am confident you keep an eye on all the time. I mean the body of the organisation – its heart, lungs and circulation!

You hear a lot about change management, and how to deal with it effectively. But what about the period between the old and the new – the neutral zone?

Too many people blame circumstances or those around them for the stress in their life. The first step to self-leadership, and ultimately to great leadership of others is to learn to take responsibility for and manage your own responses to stress.

It’s easy to blame external circumstances when you get stopped – your manager, lack of time, a change in the market… But if anything really stops you short in life, it’s likely to be a self-limiting belief: a thought about yourself, reinforced by emotion.

Forgive me for blowing my own trumpet, but I just got this, unsolicited from an client…

Groupthink can lead to bad judgments and decisions being made, and can also cause a group of decision makers to rationalise a poor decision after the fact. It’s a simple and totally inadequate way to deal with difficult issues.

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger blasted off. Seventy-three seconds later, millions of people watched as the rocket disintegrated in a fiery explosion, and the capsule plunged back to Earth.

You’ve probably heard of ‘Zero Tolerance’ – policing that allows no crime or anti-social behaviour to be overlooked. How could the principle help you implement change?

How are you feeling about the economic climate? A knee jerk response for many businesses is to ‘batten down the hatches’, cut budgets and let people go.

At the second switch point, at around the £5-10m+ turnover and 40+ employee mark, your business moves out of the consolidation phase. The leadership group’s focus needs to move away completely from day to day operations and become Directors, with their focus on strategic, financial and legal issues. The second tier of management should take over the day-to-day running of the organisation.