Common Purpose Blog

Tottenham, Hackney, Croydon, Ealing, Barking – what do these places have in common? Aside from being areas of London, all of them were left battered and bruised by last summer’s riots. Cast your minds back almost nine months to a heat wave similar to the one we’re experiencing now and these areas, as well as [...]

Economic instability has presented businesses with many challenges since the great crash of 2008 – and these problems have refused to disappear. It is amid these harsh financial realities that the perception of learning and development (L&D) has changed. A recent survey by the Henley Business School suggested that L&D has become increasingly focused as organisations look [...]

Juggling, juggling, juggling. It can be a great party trick but more pertinently, it’s what we do on a daily basis. You hear the phrase constantly in our organisation and so many others too – juggling is everywhere! Those of you not based in our Central Office in London might be surprised to know that we [...]

Today, we are living in a world that’s about taking short-term decisions: CEOs who pray to at the altar of the devil called quarterly earnings, companies that react to rivals, politicians who are only worried about the coming election cycle and leaders who are in for the near-term gain. And then there are Steve and [...]

On the fourth night of the ‘troubles’ three young men were murdered in Birmingham, UK. The country waited in worry and anticipation for reprisal attacks on subsequent nights. It was left to the grief stricken father of one of the boys, Tariq Jahan, to provide some of clarity, wisdom and reason. In his voice, full [...]

There are many different incentives to try and get people and businesses to become more ‘green’, and in particular to reduce their carbon emissions. Do they work? Are carbon emissions dropping? And if they are, by enough to hit some of the targets that are thought to be necessary for the future safeguarding of resources [...]

It is raining. Not cold, but raining. Not a good day to lay and sit on the ground in the city centre of Hamburg, just beneath one of Hamburg’s tourist attractions: the river (but lake-like) Alster. Three Your Turn graduates do it anyway. Wrapped up in sleeping bags, with woollen hats on. This was Saturday, [...]

I spoke at the start of a Frontrunner (our course for university students) specifically for disabled students, which we run in association with Santander. They were a hugely focused and dynamic group who were determined to work across disability and other organisations as leaders rather than stick to networks for people with their specific disability. [...]

I met a 22 year old in Edinburgh recently who has just finished her nursing qualifications, she is eager to get going with her career, make her contribution to society and use her knowledge and skills but there are so few jobs coming up that the competition is fierce – it’s no better if she [...]

Dishaa (our Venture which connected leaders in the UK and India) was so successful, unbelievably successful, that we have been asked to launch similar Ventures between lots of countries around the world (see www.commonpurpose.org/ventures). Dishaa means direction in Hindi, so we will have Phambili (direction in the Nguni languages inc. Xhosa and Zulu), Dao Xiang [...]