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energy Archives - Eve Poole

Dec 10
0

Be more unicorn

By | Business | No Comments

You can’t avoid the unicorns, if you go into any gift shop these days. They’re everywhere – key-rings, handbags, fairy-lights; you can even buy sequinned t-shirts that say ‘be more unicorn’ on the front. It’s funny how much appeal this mythical beast has.

In Scotland, where it’s the national animal, Stirling Castle has gone unicorn-mad. In the Queen’s Inner Hall, you’ll find seven hand-woven unicorn tapestries hanging on the walls. They’re based on the famous Hunt of the Unicorn series from the 1500s, which are now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Re-creating them in Stirling was quite a project, costing £2million and taking 13 years. The panels show a unicorn being hunted, tamed by a virgin, killed, then appearing alive again in captivity. This narrative is assumed to be an allegorical interpretation of the life of Christ, although no-one really knows what’s going on in this story. Read More

Jun 24
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Is it worth being a nasty boss?

By | Business | No Comments

This week I was struck by a piece in the FT arguing that “nasty leaders can be successful – if they don’t cross the line.’ The piece described some bullies who had seemingly produced excellent results, and who were not as unpopular as their behaviour might suggest. The article was careful not to suggest bullying as a strategy, of course, but the subtext is clear. If you get results, you can usually ‘get away’ with bad behaviour.

And we know this to be true, because we see it every day in our organisations, both public and private, and in politics as much as in the professions. But before you nod sadly and move swiftly on, please stop for a moment. You are being had. This is classic ‘end justifies the means’ morality, and we are so used to it as the prevailing ethical narrative that it seems irrefutable and unremarkable. Read More

Feb 01
2

Candlemas at Lincoln College

By | Theology | No Comments

Today we celebrate Candlemas. So I want to talk to you about candles. You’ve got one in front of you. Have you ever stopped to consider what a clever technology they are? Let me read out to you this description of how they work, courtesy of Chris Woodford of ‘Explain that Stuff’:

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Jan 29
3

The Ridley Lecture

By | Theology | No Comments

As well as Chairing Faith in Business here at Ridley, I teach leadership at Ashridge Business School. Over the last 10 years or so I’ve been lucky enough to help quite a wide range of leaders work out how to get better at what they do. I’ve taught the Head of Clouds at the Met Office, the Head of Killing at Bernard Matthews, and the Administrator of Tristan da Cunha. Read More

Jul 21
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Drunk in Charge? The CEO Sleep Scandal

By | Business | No Comments

What’s on the average manager’s mind? Too much, it would appear. In one of their periodic bedroom surveys, Ashridge Business School found that managers spend fewer than 7 hours asleep at night, and this decreases as seniority increases. Match this up with a long-day no-lunch culture, and this becomes an extremely alarming statistic. 17 hours of sustained wakefulness has been shown to result in changes in behaviour equivalent to drinking 2 glasses of wine. In the UK people who’ve drunk this much aren’t allowed to drive or operate machinery, yet their equivalents are at the helm of some of our largest companies, making really scary decisions, every single day. Should shareholders be worried?

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