Over the past few years, I became increasingly annoyed over the use of acronyms in my organisation. I am far from the only person out there which hates acronyms, and Elon Musk’s 2010 email regarding acronyms in SpaceX resonates very strongly with me. “Excessive use of made-up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and … Read more
A couple of months ago I decided to start a new daily habit of spending at least one hour upskilling myself. Given my interest in strategy and data analysis, I decided to become an Excel superuser. Currently, I would classify myself as an advanced Excel user, with my biggest accomplishment so far being building data … Read more
I met Diana in Autumn 2018 when she organised the winter 2018 Moscow Toastmasters conference. She later moved to London and served as conference director for the Toastmasters District 91 spring conference. There, she spearheaded the transition from a world-class in person event to a world-class online event. Last year she launched Skillsme Academy and I recently … Read more
You’ve perhaps been asked to “say a few words” and deliver a short speech at very short notice, and with only a limited amount of time to prepare. This will be especially the case if you are in a position of responsibility or a leadership position. In my leadership journey, this happened so many times … Read more
Once upon a time, when I was a child in primary school, I distinctly remember our teacher telling us – “Your notes must be neat, tidy and most importantly, understandable to anyone visiting the school that may want to look at them.’ This sentence stayed with me ever since and often comes back to my … Read more
It feels strange to realise that it will soon be one year since we moved online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our post-pandemic world will be far more attuned to the idea of working remotely and attending remote meetings with team members, friends and colleagues from all over the world. Meanwhile, new services make it … Read more
One year ago, I would have never imagined that nearly all of my speaking would move online to the virtual world. Yet, the pandemic changed the world beyond recognition and forced organisations worldwide to move their activities online or face extinction. By leading the transition from physical to online meetings in my own organisation. I … Read more
I am delighted to be presenting a webinar for the Nuclear Institute tomorrow entitled ‘Speaking with Impact’. It is always a pleasure for me to do anything relating to the industry where I learnt a lot about leadership and made some cool memories like walking atop working Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactors. Here is why you should … Read more
I’ve run a lot of workshops over the last few weeks. Typically, an email exchange takes place between myself and my host regarding the equipment I’ll need and whether I’ll be using slides or not. Most of the time I present, everything happens smoothly and I’m capable of handling any small glitches happening on the … Read more
I spent a couple of hours during the Christmas break to watch the recording of my recent speeches. It is an exercise that I had somewhat neglected in the past as I discovered that I hadn’t done a self-evaluation of many speeches, some even stretching back to 2018! It was time well spent and reminded … Read more