It’s hard to imagine two groups less likely to unite in the UK in the mid-1980s. On one hand the miners of South Wales, locked in a bitter, violent, year-long strike against pit closures. On the other: London’s lesbian and gay community, engaged in its own battle against discrimination. Yet this unlikely union is what… Read More »Great movie leaders: Mark Ashton in Pride
“What is it that you actually do?” Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Woz) asks in the movie Steve Jobs, after listing the impressive contributions of other Apple team members. “Musicians play their instruments,” Jobs tells him simply. “I play the orchestra.” Jobs’s widow and current Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook… Read More »Playing the orchestra: lessons from Steve Jobs
There aren’t many movies based on Powerpoint presentations. So it stands to reason that Al Gore’s slide show on climate change, the subject of An Inconvenient Truth, is just a little bit special. Gore shows that if you create a compelling story around an important issue, a presentation is as… Read More »10 ways to make your presentation memorable
Watching Remember the Titans recently, I was struck by how often Kotter’s 8 steps for managing change appeared. Set in Virginia in 1971, the film tells the true story of the newly integrated TC Williams High School football team. In a town awash with anger and prejudice, new coach Herman… Read More »Kotter’s 8 steps for change in Remember the Titans
There’s a scene in Apollo 13 when Flight Controller John Aaron declares that, to get the stricken shuttle back to Earth, they’ll need to get the shuttle power output down to 12 amps. The response? ‘You can’t run a vacuum cleaner on 12 amps John!’ It’s a moment that perfectly… Read More »Top five leadership movies: Apollo 13