The more I work with senior teams and wider systems the more it becomes apparent that the quality of behaviours and relationships are linked not just to the highest things of shared purpose but just as much to some of the basics of self-organisation and personal disciplines.

Most of you will be familiar with the story of the Princess and the Pea. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is really just a psychological expansion of this fairy tale.

It is apparent that most of us still cope at work with some persistent ‘peas’ - discomforts, even though we have layered them with the mattresses of avoidance. As a result while it is not at the forefront of our minds - because we are spending a lot of time looking for the next best memory foam mattress as useful distraction to treat the symptoms - it is actually always there as a nagging and debilitating discomfort. These peas detract from performance, attention and behaviours. They are thieves of our time and concentration, of our mental wellbeing and of our relationships at work and at home.

And yet they have become embedded and justified - with a raft of habits evolved to cope rather than to resolve. Which is why, even though my main focus is on supporting complex system change, I also run a blog series called 'Making Time To Think’. Because you cannot hope to change the system if you are not 'the change you want to see in others’.