The Productive Pessimist

  The Productive Pessimist ' s  working practice is to ask 5 questions of clients whom we're helping to address strategic, systemic, and crisis challenges in their focus remits. 5 questions. No more, no less. Asking so few questions compels everyone in the room to focus on the "real problems", and set aside their personality clashes, their fixations, their personal perceptions of "the problem", and come together to bring through meaningful responses. The business community, once they finally accept they do have  problems, engage quite well with the challenge. The charitable sector, however... I'd like  to say the non-profit sector doesn't even accept they have any problems, because that would at least be reasonable, and make a lot more sense than the real situation, which is that the voluntary sector does nothing other than  complain about all  the "problems" it has.  And yes, many of those problems are genuine, and valid.  But, despite all...

  Ageism is often seen as exclusively about protecting older  people. However, "age" is a protected characteristic in UK law, and means any  age . People often use "ageism" to rail against statements such as "Ok, Boomer" - but "Ok, Boomer" relates to a mindset  - the mindset that says "the way I  do things is the best  way!",  "people don't have a right to be themselves  - they have to fit in, because that's what I  did!",   "I should be prioritised in every single situation!"  People of any age can have this "Boomer Mindset", while, equally, people of the "Baby Boom" generation can be very open-minded, very engaged with technology and change, and very enthusiastic about emerging trends. If you don't want to be referred to as a "Boomer", all you need to do is change your mindset. In contrast, millennials and Gen Z can't  escape accusations of "laziness",  "...