"I'd like to talk about the tree between our houses." J - a coachee on a development program - was open about the problem with his neighbour: "The tree might be on his side of the fence, but the branches are equally on my side. It blanks out light, even on sunny days." I asked how long it had been a problem for him. "Years. Maybe ten." So why haven't you spoken about it? "Because we're both good neighbours. We have a good relationship, and I don't want to be the person who p

Robert Rauschenberg’s best-known work is ‘Monogram’ - a.k.a. the goat in the tyre. The artist and the artwork are caught in the same relationship as Leonardo Da Vinci = ‘Mona Lisa’, John Constable = ‘The Hay Wain’, and Damian Hirst = ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ (a.k.a the shark in formaldehyde). You can bring to mind at least one of these right now, perhaps all of them. Although it may not be a memory of the artefact itself; instead,

One house, ten contestants, thirty cameras, forty microphones, one murder ... and no evidence.

A venture fund investor asked me to look into a small company that had attracted him a couple of years before, now he wasn’t so sure. “Either the proposition is falling behind a fast moving market, or it’s the way the Founder addresses the market. Take up the drains and let me know what you find.” He was right about both. Founder wasn’t a bad person, just someone who was in love with the technology and had no interest in his customers. Of course, he wanted to sell his sol

Long, long ago - before Malta joined the EU and New York experienced power outage - I was on a mini tour of Asia, signing contracts with resellers for some software products. Most disconcerting was Taiwan (where a measure of success was how few people fell asleep during my presentation); most exciting was Hong Kong and the view across the bay. Media interviews were part of the trip, so I found myself in the Reception for a local radio station, waiting to go on air. For a few

12 ANGRY MEN Twelve jurors are set the task to reach a verdict on a teenage Hispanic boy who has just been tried for the murder of his father, with a guilty verdict sending him to the electric chair. There must be a unanimous verdict on a capital case. The jury foreman (Juror ONE - no character is named) asks for a preliminary vote: ONE - . . . nine . . . ten . . . eleven . . . That’s eleven for guilty. Okay. Not guilty? (EIGHT’s hand is raised.) One. Right. Okay. Eleven

There are no rules and no guarantees when trying something new. But we can learn from the successes of others - especially those outside our field. 1 Welcome unexpected proposals Aged 16, Julie Taymor went to Paris and joined the Jacques LeCoq mime and theatre school. At 18, she returned to the US to study anthropology, folklore and shamanism. Julie then won a Fellowship to study Bunraku theatre in Japan and shadow puppet forms in Indonesia. An unconventional caree

"Instead of what our imagination makes us suppose and which we worthless try to discover, life gives us something that we could hardly imagine." Marcel Proust Problem: How to reunite the 52%-48% divide of the Brexit vote? Solution: A 57 year-old potter, with a transvestite alter ego called Claire, a customised Harley-Davidson Knucklehead, and a teddy bear called Alan Measles. How far did you read before you heard your mind slam shut? 'Brexit'? Turner Prize-winning Grayson Per

The Parents' Guide to Music Exhibitions My sons recently persuaded me to accompany them to the International Music Expo at the ExCeL Centre ('accompany' - translation: pay for, feed and negotiate on behalf of). No matter how hard one tries to 'keep up' with teenage vocabulary ('Jokes'. 'Trust'. 'Legend'), it becomes clear pretty quickly that frankly, you just don't have a clue. You might think that you've just tuned-in, but in reality they've moved onto the next big thing

Bill Drummond - one of life's agents provocateurs, challenging conventional wisdom and posing difficult questions.