United Airlines: An abject lesson in how not to behave in a crisis April 12, 2017 Unless you were taking a break from the internet for the past two days, you would have come across a video of an elderly man – apparently 69, apparently a doctor – with his shirt rolled above his stomach, glasses slid down his face, blood dripping from his mouth, dragged down the aisle of the [...]
Hit Makers by Derek Thompson: Read this book if you want to learn how to write March 9, 2017 I have a confession to make: I don’t like reading books about consumer culture. I often find the subject slight, the writing bland and the overall effort insubstantial. But I read Hit Makers by Derek Thompson. Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, is a distinct voice in liberal American journalism, and Hit Makers, his [...]
My best friend the algorithm is a better human than you are February 24, 2017 Thanks to my friends, I discover some outstanding TV drama from time to time. Like Lost, for example, or the first three seasons of Homeland. Two years ago, someone suggested that I watch a show. To be precise, they did not suggest, they insisted – indeed, demanded – sending me message after message which said: [...]
Let’s stop being so British about the chronically late February 16, 2017 To this day, my first accounting class remains my most vivid memory of Insead. For the first 10 minutes, the professor stood silently at the lectern, watching the endless file of late-comers filter down the aisles – coffee and croissant in hand – clamber to their seats, shuffle their bags noisily. He is a push-over, I [...]
Let’s not make feminist idols of women who refuse to wear high heels at work February 2, 2017 A report by two parliamentary committees has called for a review of equality legislation, after a receptionist engaged by outsourcing firm Portico was sent home without pay when she refused to wear high heels while temping at PwC. From what I could tell, the temp’s case consisted of three claims. The first was that wearing [...]
Your CV has a bigger problem than over-use of buzzwords January 27, 2017 When list of common LinkedIn buzzwords was published on these pages on Wednesday, it prompted me to read through the profiles of my extended network. After an uninspiring two hours, many of my conclusions matched those of LinkedIn. The use of the word “leadership”, for example. People work for “leading companies” and study at “leading [...]
There’s nothing wrong with being “always on”: Not everyone likes their family January 13, 2017 In the run-up to the US elections, I received most of my news from one source. I followed a young journalist of The Atlantic, who blogged tirelessly on every nuance of the election process on Twitter. For the six months that I followed him, he was offline for no more than a few hours a day, [...]
There are no excuses for City workers’ poor grammar and spelling: Proper use of English shows professionalism, erudition and class December 6, 2016 A recent study claimed that spelling and grammar among 16-year-old boys and girls taking their GCSEs is at its worst in 30 years. Spelling and grammar is also easily at its worst among grown-up men and women working in the City. By way of illustration, here is an excerpt from an email sent to me [...]
We should not be telling little girls that Americans hate women November 30, 2016 Donald Trump’s victory proves that America hates women”, declared a reputable news source shortly after the US election. America is big, and it does not think as one. Some men hate women and voted for Trump to preserve the patriarchy – but most fell for his promise of quick economic fixes. Some women did not [...]
In defence of the global citizen: Bashing the cosmopolitan way of life is the stuff of the seventies October 20, 2016 If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere,” recently declared our Prime Minister. I believe that this statement is both parochial and narrow-minded, as if spoken by someone who has only ever lived in one country, spoken one language and does not know better. I grew up [...]