The Kama Sutra of Work

How reputation and lubrication eased the pathway into my first book.

Warning notice!

For a long time, I ran businesses staffed by a lot of young people; frankly, everyone was younger than me, much younger than my own kids. When it came to training – sales training, self-management, personal development - I liked to do it myself. I was (am) as a qualified teacher, coach, NLP trainer, hypnotherapist and I enjoy it and am good at it. All teachers have their own style, and mine has always been serious/funny. I use metaphors a lot and make students laugh, which is how they remember what they’re taught.

Previous attendees of my sessions repeatedly asked me to write a book about one particular favourite theme – the value and joy of work – but I found myself struggling to repeat on the page what I could do in front of a group. I was used to being irreverent, funny challenging and often confrontational, always with a smile.

At the time, I had a regular column in Management Today, under the pseudonym Madame Guillotine. The name came from my reputation for delivering; I either got things done (executed) or got rid of them (executioner). I enjoyed the play on words, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the same light-hearted seriousness to work as a book. I tried for over four years and threw away forests of paper and acres of confidence. I was boring myself silly with my own stuff. The world didn’t need another boring management book and I couldn’t write my way out of a paper bag.

Bemoaning this fact with an old friend, loosened by a few glasses of wine, I got talking about my frustrations and told her I was giving up. She tried to dissuade me, but I was deep into self-pity and the dispiriting realisation that I might be a great talker, but I was apparently a rubbish writer. Forcing a change of subject, she asked me about my week ahead. When I mentioned I had several evening business events, she declared how much she hated ‘networking’.   I laughed and said I didn’t call it networking, I called it lubrication. Which made her laugh.

Sixty-nine post-it notes later, the Kama Sutra of Work pulsed into life. I focussed it on young women because it was easier to write it that way, but men have liked it just as much.

If you’re prudish, don’t read it. 

Maybe we should get to know each other better first.