Common Purpose Blog

Earlier this year I turned forty-one. I started my first real job, as a trainee chartered accountant, at the age of eighteen whilst awaiting my A level results. For a year I worked five days a week, 8.45am to 5.15pm, with an hour for lunch and fifteen days holiday a year. This is the only [...]

Every year on 10 October we celebrate the Common Purpose 360 Day. It’s an invitation to anyone, anywhere to do one thing, big or small, to challenge the way they see the world. It’s a chance to step into someone else’s shoes; to shake things up; to gain self awareness; to broaden your perspective; or [...]

What is the definition of impossible?  If it is some Herculean but pointless challenge then there is no point.  However, if the impossibility comes from the failure of others to deal with a particular problem or opportunity it will always be a leader that attempts the challenge. I give a pressing example from my own [...]

Common Purpose is currently in its 21st year, in which time we have met and engaged with so many leaders all over the world. In celebration of this, over the coming weeks we will be featuring blogs from 21 guest writers – a group of people who represent the diverse nature of the leaders we [...]

I am not a native English speaker. So, as a prudent former banker, I looked up the definition of ruthless before attempting a response to this question. Ruthless is defined as “without pity or compassion, cruel, merciless”. This is hardly the way anyone would like to be remembered, except for the few so obstinate in [...]

Common Purpose is currently in its 21st year, in which time we have met and engaged with so many leaders all over the world. In celebration of this, over the coming weeks we will be featuring blogs from 21 guest writers – a group of people who represent the diverse nature of the leaders we [...]

Common Purpose is currently in its 21st year, in which time we have met and engaged with so many leaders all over the world. In celebration of this, over the coming weeks we will be featuring blogs from 21 guest writers – a group of people who represent the diverse nature of the leaders we [...]

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, [...]