Sensei

Sensei BBC Interview on Double Jobbing

Unless you’ve been on another planet, you know that ‘double jobbing’ – the practice of politicians holding on to two jobs at once – is big news in the UK and Northern Ireland.  We’ve been told that double jobbing is ‘on borrowed time’ as far as NI is concerned.  This is after threats of pay cuts and forced resignations for those who don’t quit this bad habit.

I was interviewed on Tuesday of this week outside Stormont by the cordial Gareth Gordon and his team of professionals.  Our meetup was quite funny.  As I wandered in to the hallway and scanned around looking for someone who might resemble a BBC correspondent, I overhead a man say,

“Great start.  The time management consultant is late!”

I wasn’t actually, thanks Gareth, but we had a good laugh over Gareth’s embarrassed protestations of innocence.

That’s right, they wanted a professional opinion of the double jobbing furore.  Usually I don’t mix NI politics with business but I made an exception in this case as (a) it wasn’t party political, and (b) I do have strong feelings on the matter.  As I stood outside in the rain and the wind – we weren’t allowed to do the interview inside because I’m not a member of our political elite – I tried to make the point that multi-jobbing requires multi-tasking on a grand scale, and multi-tasking is a myth.  That’s right, it’s impossible, even for women.  How so?  Glad you asked!

Read more…

Radical Time Management Workshop Returns

On Wednesday 18 November 2009 I’m delivering a 1-day workshop as part of the Queen’s University Continuing Professional Development (CPD)  Short Coruse Programme…for the second time.  It’s name?  Radical Time Management!

Here’s the rundown. Read more…

The Management Consultant Who Changed the World For the Worse

One of my favourite authors is the communications theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman.  I found his classic book Amusing Ourselves to Death so powerful that I don’t own a TV.  This makes for astonished intakes of breath at parties.  But I find his analysis of contemporary society – that it more closely resembles Huxley’s decedent Brave New World than Orwell’s totalitarian 1984 – persuasive.

I’ve been re-reading another one of Postman’s book recently,  the lesser known Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.  His thesis is that the US is the first modern culture to have shifted from a  technology-using worldview to a technology-dominated one.  This is one ‘culture war‘ that is not usually included in debate but that is far more deep-seated in the American psyche.

This isn’t a book review, so I’ll spare you the summary.   Read more…