After months of disrupted education due to the current pandemic, the back-to-school season has started and also the intensifying debate around sending children to school. Having your child’s physical presence in a classroom provides more than just academics. In addition to reading and writing, children learn socio-emotional skills and have access to mental health support and other essential services that cannot be provided with online learning. There are some households that have a genuine choice of whether they can decide to send their children back to school. This is through wealth ..read more

There is no better truism than ‘better late than never’. The natural impulse is to specialize and excel at one thing. If 2020 has been a testament to anything, it is that things change, and we need to be able to evolve and adapt. While it is important to nurture and refine your core strengths, it is also important to pay attention to your burgeoning capabilities. They are as important and need to be cultivated to help you make more holistic progress in your career or way of life.   LinkedIn has a number of online courses that you can enrol into from Graphic Design to coding. Assess your ..read more

  Very recently the leader of the SNP and Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, reiterated her party’s demand for another referendum seeking independence. After having won 80 percent of Scotland’s seats, she cast the election as a watershed moment and says she has worked her whole adult life to secure Scottish independence and it is bonkers to think she doesn’t want an independent Scotland. For many months now, a growing majority of people in Scotland have been turning towards “Yes”, suggest opinion polls. So, what is behind the change since the 2014 referendum when 55 percent of v ..read more

 As a result of the recent pandemic, we are experiencing a public health emergency. At this juncture it is critical that everyone – employers, employees and the self employed – takes steps to keep themselves safe. Organisations, big or small, have a legal responsibility to protect employees and guests from risk to their health and safety. And as we navigate the evolving realities of the pandemic, we are looking ahead to what the future of the workplace holds for all of us. And it is vital we redefine the workplace. While physical distancing, no doubt, is going to be the new normal, coll ..read more

  John Hume was a fighter and a peacemaker, consummate and confident. It is a sobering realisation of how John Hume’s death marks the passing of the political titan who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fashioning the agreement that ended violence in his native Northern Ireland. The entire nation is in a deep state of shock. He came at a time when nationalism was a declining force in the new Europe. He was both the architect and the builder behind the Good Friday agreement that kept hopes alive during the darkest days of the Northern Ireland Troubles.  In thinking about his achievements ..read more

‘Culture is dynamic, not static. Everyone in your organization creates your culture by what they think, say and do each day. Culture is lead from the top down but it comes to life from the bottom up.’ – Jon Gordon, an American author and speaker.   While it is certainly true that the organisational culture starts at the top, it is only half the story. Leadership alignment, though extremely important, is just the first step. To bring the culture to life you need to get every member on board and that happens with a bottom-up approach. Say, the top brass in an organisation wants to i ..read more

‘Great leaders build and drive great cultures. They know it’s their number one priority. They can’t delegate it. They must lead and be engaged in the process.’ – Jon Gordon, an American author and speaker.   Isn’t it true, in sports, some teams win because they have the best players and other teams, despite having good players, regularly finish far from the top? And you must have also wondered why some teams with only average players become champions. Remember, Cluadio Ranieri of the Foxes claiming the maiden Premier League title with 100:1 odds! One part of the secret is teamwo ..read more

Organisations across the globe are slowly getting back to offices after a long hiatus of working from home. However, management at all levels is now facing the conundrum of requesting staff to return to the office especially when employees are able to deliver work with no hindrances to efficiency. What is the real need of coming into work when the option of working in your pyjamas, reducing fares on your Oyster card and prepping lunch seem not only possible but also a lot more convenient? Besides the employee preferences, opening up offices now come with a lot of rules and guidelines which m ..read more

‘Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers’ – Seth Godin, American Author If you want your business to be successful you have to get people to want to talk about your company and that comes from being remarkable. Come to think of it, the term remarkable is used in the rarest of occasions to describe something that is demanding attention outstandingly. For any business to succeed, its founding pair of hands is to be remarkable as well. Why should people make a remark abou ..read more

Your team pays attention to the details so that you can captain the larger picture. Red Bulls F1 racer Max Verstappen can vouch for this in light of his recent victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix! No, it’s not an error because in his own words the end result of the race ‘Was like a victory!’ against unbelievable odds.   On the observational laps prior to the race, with wet conditions and cold tyres and brakes, Max crashed his car into a barrier wall on the lap. The Red Bull RB16 car appeared to be in no shape for a race having sustained extensive damage, but his team stepped up with j ..read more