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Partner consulting organizations

Future Considerations (www.futureconsiderations.com) is one of Europe's most sought after leadership consulting boutiques. It has worked with six of the top ten largest UK companies, includng Shell, BP, and HSBC. It was one of the first to unite 'integral philosophy' with business and sustainability to produce concrete results for businesses.

Corven Consulting is a well regarded UK boutique that offers performance improvement, safety and operational risk management, executive development and strategy implementation. Their clients include top 20 firms in extractive industries, utilities, and global banks.

On the nightstand

Conscious Business by Fred Kofman is the book I wish I'd written. It is an inspiring vie of how deep personal transformation can effect business change.

Plato not Prozac by Lou Marinoff is a tour of Philosophy as it can be applied to everyday life dilemmas. What would Lao Tzu, Socrates, Kant, or Heidegger have recommended. A very valuable adjunct to traditional psychological approaches to personal development.

Top two consulting books of all time

The Fifth Discipline and Flawless Consulting (Senge and Block respectively) will stand the test of time, in my view, against the parade of fads, quick-fixes and junk out there.

Dusting off Mastery (George Leonard)

Few books that are such an easy read are quite so valuable as this one. George Leonard underlines the importance of life long learning, the consequences of becoming a non-learner, how to deal with performance and career plateaus. This book is as useful for athletes, chess players, and artists as it is for business people. A masterpiece.

There is an entire billion dollar industry devoted to taking the business’ temperature through surveys of all kinds. Most of those are a waste of money because there are few good doctors who know what to do next to reduce the fever!

In order to be an inspirational leader, you need to first be inspired.

Culture Change is the most talked about and most infrequently achieved change in the business arena. Everybody says they want it, few are prepared to do what it takes.

Great talent development and a high-performance culture are key differentiators between world-class businesses and the mediocre. Sadly, few organizations know how to sustainably produce those.

What Gandhi taught us about leadership is that it is an inside job. He was shy, bookish and incapable of giving a public address. He knew he could only change India as quickly as he could change himself.

We don’t think a moral person is someone who merely obeys the law. We set the bar higher. Contrary to Milton Friedman, the same applies to businesses: an ethical business must have higher standards than simply avoiding the courts.

Nelson Mandela used to jog in place daily in his toilet-sized cell. Why? Despite being twenty years into a life sentence with no hope of reprieve, he said “one day I will lead my people to freedom, and to do that, I will have to be fit.” That sort of resolve is sadly missing from most of today's business leaders.

360 degree feedback is a recipe for mediocrity. If Winston Churchill scores 7 out of 7 for inspiration, how come so many business leaders score between 5.5 and 6 on 360 degree instruments. If raters standards dervie from those they see around them, we have a recipe for mediocrity.

Most of my life, I’ve had an IQ above 160. However, I’d trade 20 of those points, for 20 character-quotient points any day. The latter are much more valuable and much harder to come by.

Spirituality is essential for human flourishing. By that I mean living a life of meaning, connectedness, values and purpose. However, the connection with religion makes the word taboo. Leadership development requires working very hard on a leader’s spirituality, but never call it that.

Paul Gibbons

Resources