What is it about meetings that seem to be interminable? Wouldn’t you rather be doing something useful rather than watching the agenda being pulped? When you’re involved in a meeting that’s meandering along, how do you feel? Can’t you just hear the clock ticking?

Enter the facilitator (like enter the dragon, but less dramatic and certainly less painful). Here is the saviour of wasted time! Here is the bringer of focus. Here at last is the person who provides the method and means to...

Here's a little exercise that I'm about to use in a customer service workshop. Its origins lay in another subject, but if I told you what it was it would give you an unfair advantage.

Think about your customers. Who are they? What is it that they want?

Now let's look at my good friend Lieutenant-Colonel Forsythe-Smythe. Imagine what the Colonel looks like. What is the Colonel wearing? What newspaper does the Colonel read? What kind of car does the Colonel drive? Where...