Financial Times FT.com

Resources

Principal content

Lucy Kellaway

Lucy Kellaway is the FT’s management columnist. For the last ten years her weekly Monday column has poked fun at management fads and jargon and celebrated the ups and downs of office life.

In her 20 years at the FT Lucy has been energy correspondent, Brussels correspondent, a Lex writer, and an interviewer of business people and celebrities for the Lunch with the FT series. Prizes include Columnist of the Year in the British Press Awards 2006, Industrial Society WorkWord Award (twice) and the Wincott Young Financial Journalist Award. Her book, Sense and Nonsense in the Office, was published by FT Prentice Hall in 1999. Martin Lukes: Who Moved My BlackBerry(TM) was published in 2005 by Penguin.

Born in London in 1959, Lucy graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She is married to David Goodhart, founder and editor of Prospect, the current affairs magazine. They have four children.

Would you like to comment on Lucy’s columns? You can do so on the Management blog

E-mail Lucy Kellaway

Listen to Lucy podcast

Lucy Kellaway’s latest columns

- -

When a longer working life is good for us all

Work is a bit like taking exercise. It can be boring and stressful while you are doing it but it is preferable to not working, writes Lucy Kellaway

Why ‘chillaxing’ isn’t cool

Chilling is seen by today’s children as the natural order of things. However, taking it easy in the office is not a good idea, writes Lucy Kellaway

Taboo or not taboo? Some new office guidelines

A search for the sacrosanct subjects of the workplace was almost fruitless as most of the old strictures at work are on the way out, but there are still some no-go areas, writes Lucy Kellaway

The perils of revealing your illness at work

Gordon Brown’s questioning over whether he takes pills to cope with the pressure reveals the new taboo in the workplace, writes Lucy Kellaway

How to be a top female boss

Anna Wintour’s longevity in the fashion industry and hard-nosed approach provide a useful model for women executives, writes Lucy Kellaway

Drug dealers are perfect gurus in a recession

With their ruthlessness and brilliance at managing cash flow, hustlers such as the reformed 50 Cent can provide useful lessons to executives, writes Lucy Kellaway

Letting the office go to the dogs

For one day in September, several thousand of the unemployed will make their way into UK workplaces. Most will have exceptionally low IQs and will be capable of following only the simplest instructions. The occasion is Take Your Dogs to Work Day, writes Lucy Kellaway

Lunch with the FT: Nick Hornby

Lucy Kellaway rummages around the bestselling author’s sock drawer and finds out why he fixes on people who don’t get, and possibly don’t even deserve, much sympathy

Wash away management’s verbal germs

Hygiene at work is in. In office toilets, grown-up employees are being told how to wash their hands. But now businesses are being urged to keep metaphorically clean, writes Lucy Kellaway

Unhappy lessons in smiling

A Japanese scheme to rate the curvaceousness of staff smiles is flawed not because it’s like Big Brother but because it wrongly assumes that a bigger smile is a better one, writes Lucy Kellaway

The career choice that delivers

Women in the boardroom

Take it easy about ageing

The missed trick in the new pay reality

School exams fail the office test

What transparency on expenses would really reveal

Kudos to bosses who use praise wisely

Underdog tale sheds light on pushy parenting