Category Archives: The Laws of Colinism

Focus is the new cool

Posted on December 10th, 2012

It must be indisputable by now that the world of work we accepted as normal just a few years ago, has gone forever. The talk when the world’s economies began to dissolve in 2008 into the thin air of which they were largely made was that we’d ride out the bad times to a recovery. [...]

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You can’t lead if you don’t know your own mind

Posted on November 28th, 2012

I’ve been having a blast lately. Interviews and research for Building a Happy Sandpit are well underway and as I dig deeper into South African business culture, I am discovering more-or-less equal amounts of what I might call over- and under-thinking on the subject. What is apparent is that nobody is specifically just zen about [...]

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Why networks have the power to kill hierarchies

Posted on November 5th, 2012

This is a world where networks defeat hierarchies. There are any number of people who depend on their position in a hierarchy for status. It’s a natural thing; even wild animals are ordered by their place on the food chain. And for many people, especially in some of the more traditional cultures, social and professional [...]

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The paradox of control

Posted on October 16th, 2012

I wish I was more disciplined. As a control-monger who is singularly poor at long-term focus and therefore at the retention of control, my life is one of constant stops and starts. I seize on a notion like a cat on a mouse, but unlike a cat who will allow its prey to wander off [...]

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Building a Happy Sandpit

Posted on September 26th, 2012

This, I believe: Employees in a business are like children in a sandpit. Put the right children into your sandpit and they’ll play together for hours, building sandcastles. They may build very elaborate ones. One of them will run off to the standpipe and fetch a bucket of water and they’ll build a moat. They’ll [...]

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It’s just a matter of people until I make it

Posted on August 26th, 2012

In the past month, as I have reconciled myself with a revised game plan which demands that I leave London and return to make Johannesburg my permanent base, I’ve been struck by a recurring observation. We often say that things are just ‘a matter of time’ as if time has anything to do with real [...]

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Rip it up and start again

Posted on August 12th, 2012

As a writer and as a speaker, I have aborted hundreds of storylines, hundreds of attempts at concept development, hundreds and hundreds of paragraphs of half-formed ideas. As a human being, I have invested in relationships which haven’t worked out, and one-tenth tested business ideas that may or may not have been worth pursuing if [...]

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An incredible awakening I didn’t even realise I needed

Posted on August 4th, 2012

I realised recently that my life has been little more than a journey through unreality. I’ve done a stack of interesting things in 42 years and by many standards, I’ve done pretty well and been pretty lucky. What’s surprised me recently however is the realisation of how few questions I can answer about my reasons [...]

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In praise of supportive selfishness

Posted on August 1st, 2012

Sometimes you get change thrust upon you; change you never anticipated, didn’t choose and really, truly do not want, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. Just such a moment of change happened in my life one evening this July with the death of one of the people closest to me. [...]

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I am a spiritual Jeff Lebowski. That’s the problem …

Posted on July 7th, 2012

I can’t honestly tell you that I love a challenge. If I’m totally reflective, I’d snooze my life away in a hammock while waves lap gently against the beach just within earshot over the control of a successful business empire every single day of the week. This understanding of myself is something that I tend [...]

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