Faris Aranki

How to get teams to gel quickly — harsh lessons from holidays with loose connections that holds the answer If only there was more love in teams and that everyone was more nice “There are 8 of us all nominally at the same level and we’re all senior but it is a total car crash. Nobody trusts each other and it’s led to so much sucking up to the boss, backstabbing, re-work and absolutely no decisions being made.” This is what a friend told me when I caught up with her for a long overdue lunch recently about her newish role in a prolific UK company. “As an expert in people dynamics,... Continue Reading

This is all of us chasing the moon [This is a version of an article originally written for The Portfolio Collective about portfolio careers] It’s arguably harder than ever to stand out in the modern world; not only does the average person consume about 74GB of information per day (the equivalent of 16 movies) but a lot of it is very similar and they forget most of it by the next day. This proves particularly challenging when it comes to the business world, where effectively many people are trying to ‘sell’ to the same people, bombarding them with info about their products and services;... Continue Reading

What would the movie credits of your life look like? “But do you actually know all those people”, a friend asked me as we were discussing our differing approaches to how we use LinkedIn. She’d read my recent blog all about how I treated LinkedIn as a journal and was grilling me about it — I’ve previously explained in detail my evolving approach to using LinkedIn. “If it’s a journal, why would you be willing to let others read it and, why do you care how many people read it” — she was commenting on the number of followers I had. I know it doesn’t necessarily make sense... Continue Reading

Me looking wistful just after I receive a response about an outstanding proposal I love running a start-up; it ticks so many boxes for me such as: the massive improvements to my quality of life, the levels of variety it affords me, the uplift in my independence, the healthy challenge to build something from nothing, the impact my company has on others and more. However, it has lots of downsides: loneliness in the early days, the amount I am stretched day-to-day, the constant challenge of cashflow and never being certain where the money will come from, the decision overload that goes with having... Continue Reading

Data never lies – my 10 years of dating apps “44, single and not going to have kids” There’s nothing like reading your life summarised in one sentence to really hammer home your situation. This was the killer sentence from a financial report an investment company sent me recently. They had pulled together a summary of my financial needs and were making recommendations on how I should invest my money. Forget the stellar advice contained in the report; this was the sentence that really stuck with me. Sure, to them, these were simply assumptions for their report but to me,... Continue Reading

The anatomy of a social media like — why do people hit like on a post? Me when I look at LinkedIn Recently I downloaded my data from LinkedIn to see what my biggest posts of all time were. As an analytical person, I was curious to see if there was a pattern, something I could learn from in terms of improving my posts. Regular readers will know that I like a bit of LinkedIn but, as I wrote last week, LinkedIn is more of a journal than a marketing tool for me as I love being able to document my life, sharpen my own thinking and it allows me to look back at all I have experienced (who knows... Continue Reading

This is not my desk nor hands “You need to post less” said the LinkedIn expert I spoke to this week. “The algorithm doesn’t like it when you post so much.” He was referring to the fact that the previous week I had been posting on average 3 times a day. Consideration of the algorithm may be important for some but it’s only really relevant if the only thing that is important to you is views, likes and other such aspects. I long ago came to realise that there is more to life on LinkedIn than just trying to be the most popular person out there. How my LinkedIn usage has evolved over time When... Continue Reading

“Feed the beast and the beast will feed you” — 3 LinkedIn examples from my week that emphasise why doing this effectively increases my surface area of luck John Amaechi is such a lovely man but how did I end up meeting him? Read on… Last year I took part in a interview with a class of British school kids in what was billed as “An Inspiring Talk From An Entrepreneur”. Each student got to ask me one question and I was prepared for a range of hard hitting questions. The students did not disappoint, and one in particular has come to mind a lot recently, especially when I talk... Continue Reading

This is what you get when you ask BingChat to create an image of half life in relation to friendships Somehow I ended up spending over 12 hours of my Saturday writing emails. That’s longer than I spend working on most work days; so why did I do it? What were the emails about? They were emails to all my key clients, connections and former work colleagues giving them my yearly New Year’s greetings. I used to do it as a Christmas card but switched to a New Year message a few years back because I found myself too busy at Christmas and because the people receiving it were being inundated by other... Continue Reading

GenAI helped me with an image of a panda dwelling over failure whilst everyone around him is cheerful It’s the morning of the first working Monday of 2024 and I have chosen to spend it writing my first blog of the year, but what should the topic be? This time of year there’s a lot written about resolutions, that could be a topic. Are you a resolutions kind of person? I’m not and I’ve already written about that topic 2 years ago so this blog will not be about that; plus many of you may have already given up on your resolutions anyway I am a person who loves setting myself goals and,... Continue Reading