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Octopus on a Treadmill: Insights from Gifty Enright

September 25, 2025

When Gifty Enright connected with me on LinkedIn I was immediately intrigued!

The unusual first name combined with the Irish surname was the first thing that grabbed my attention and then it was her short description of herself:

Keynote Speaker | Women’s Leadership & Workplace Wellbeing Expert | Author of Octopus on a Treadmill | Coach | NED | TEDx | Mother

Octopus on a Treadmill I thought!!

Assuming this woman had a lot of interesting things to say of course I invited her onto my podcast.

I really didn’t know what and who to expect and when she appeared on the Zoom call, as well as the formidable woman I was expecting I discovered a very warm, funny person.

We had a really great chat about her life and career and how she came about writing her book, ‘Octopus on a Treadmill’.

She told me that as a young woman growing up in Ghana she dreamt of having lots of shoes, big cupboards, and the trappings of success, so she moved to London to fulfil her dream. The Ghana she described to me sounds like a fantastic fun place and I did wonder why she never returned to live there permanently.

She quickly discovered that she missed that strong sense of community that she enjoyed in Ghana, but she dug deep and carved out a very successful career and life for herself in London complete with a family.

After a number of years with lots of hard work and career success this career mum hit a “Burnout” wall that she knew could not be solved with the medication that was being prescribed to her. While she was talking specifically about mums I think this happens to so many of us, and between a mix of the enticing corporate ladder and too much ambition, it can end up squeezing the life out of you.

As an avid reader who was determined to get better, she did lots of deep research to try to find a sustainable solution to her life situation and she found this through a mix of Western Science, Indian Philosophy and African Wisdom. She started to apply what she learnt and after just three months she was on the road to recovery and hasn’t looked back since.

She wrote the book to share what she learned so that other busy career mums (I think we should all read it) who are constantly juggling don’t hit the same burnout wall that she did.

As well as being an author, she became a public speaker and a coach and she doesn’t care so much about those shoes anymore!

I also learnt that her husband is from Kiskeam in County Cork and she loves to holiday in Ballyheigue in Kerry.

We also had a big chat about working from home and the huge difference that this flexibility can make in people’s lives.

You can listen to my chat with Gifty on the WinHappy podcast here (or on any of the podcast platforms).

Greg

Greg Canty is the Managing Partner of Fuzion, a Brand Communications Agency in Ireland with offices in Dublin and Cork.

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Posted in Equality, Personal development, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Snobs about jobs ..

September 30, 2021

I’m reading an ironic headline this morning in the Irish Times, which comes a few weeks of hearing the same stories coming from the UK:

“Lorry driver shortage ‘an imminent national emergency’ in Ireland“

Yep…it’s another one of those jobs that we look down our noses at when we talk about careers as we push our young population towards “good” jobs in STEM and in the professions.

“My daughter is studying to be a….“

“You must be so proud ….“

We’ve all heard it!

And now we realise that we don’t have builders to build the houses we need, we don’t have painters, carpenters, electricians, we don’t have chefs to cook the food we enjoy in our restaurants and hotels, we don’t have bar staff to serve us drinks and now we clearly don’t have lorry drivers to move all sorts from A to B and in the same breath some break into a cold sweat about the amount of immigrants entering the country and people stuck in direct provision limbo.

If Covid has and continues to teach us anything, it is that many of those jobs that we don’t really value and the ones that we most rely on.

Let’s lose the job snobbery and encourage people to chose careers that suit them and show them the respect they deserve – we need you..

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications who offer Marketing, PR, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Change Management, Equality, Irish Economy, Personal development, Recruitment, Technology, Training | Leave a Comment »

Authority is a privilege

April 26, 2020

Debenhams protest

I had just dropped my son off in town having brought him to say “Hi” to my mum from her driveway on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of all of this COVID lockdown.

I was glad to be out and about, and decided to take the long way home to extend my rare excursion in the car.

Brendan told me that there was a coffee shop that was open at the bottom of Barrack Street (Cork), so I decided to pop down that way. There were a few standing outside in a queue so I passed on that option and went about my journey home.

I was on Proby’s Quay with a plan to turn right and head out home via Western Road but there was a one-car tow truck pulled in just before the turn right, so instead I opted to swing left past Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral and take the College Road route instead.

As I swung left I noticed that the reason the tow truck was there was they had been stopped by the Gardaí – their car was in front of the truck, just before the traffic lights. Bad place to pull someone in I thought.

I drove up the hill and took a right onto Gillabbey Street where I had to stop as the lights were red. I was really surprised to see two Gardaí pull up alongside me in their car, gesturing to wind down my window.

Were these the same Gardai who just seconds ago were in front of the tow truck? If it was the same two, they must have been quite determined to follow me I was thinking.

I dropped my window to get an accusation hurled at me “You broke a red light!“.

I was astonished and very confused by this as I knew it was not true and was wondering why they were making such a false claim.

“It was amber when I went through, it was not red” I replied firmly

These two clearly didn’t like being disagreed with..”We saw you, it was red”

Pardon the pun about this disagreement about colours but there was no “grey” here and I was in no mood to agree with something I knew was wrong.

“I didn’t go though on a red, it was amber” I repeated.

The Garda who was driving then barked across to me “Do you think it’s ok to drive through on an amber, do you, do you?“.

“I don’t break red lights” I repeated.

These two were now really annoyed with me.

“Go through the lights and pull over” I was instructed.

The Garda approached my window, put on his blue gloves and asked for my licence, which he inspected and then he walked around my car checking the tax and insurance and everything else.

He once again came to my window and handed me back my licence, scribbled in his note book and told me I would be receiving something in the post in so many days. To be quite honest, I’m not really sure what he said.

At this stage I was really upset and felt that I was being picked on for some reason. I was minding my own business on this quiet, nothing COVID lockdown Sunday and from nowhere I get this “treatment”.

Were they chasing a quota of fines, did the interaction with the tow truck just a minute earlier wind them up, did this guy with a big mop of curly hair driving a nice car look suspicious and they needed an excuse to pull me over or was it just hassling for the sake of hassling?

I said to the Garda that I felt I was picked on for some reason and he denied it. I repeated my accusation and that was the last of our interaction.

A week later I still can’t figure it out, but what I do know is that it really upset me being accused unfairly of something I didn’t do, and I do know that it left me with a really bad feeling towards these Gardaí and in truth a very unhealthy, unreasonable feeling towards Gardaí generally – is this what many of them are like?

(I know that’s not true, but this is what I was suddenly feeling)

Up until this point I was four square on the side of all Gardai doing such Trojan work at this time, with the difficult job of maintaining social distancing and basically keeping us all safe. I couldn’t believe how disgusting and wrong it was for anyone to abuse a Garda doing this work and to those who actually spat at them…I’m sorry, they deserve the worst.

Now, I thought about how other people must feel if they are accused unfairly, the damage that must cause their mentality, including that legacy feeling towards authority.

My little interaction was a tiny thing, but I certainly know how it felt, so what must it feel like to people who are being picked on all of the time because of where they live, how they look or the colour of their skin?

In the following days I read some media reports on social media about the Gardai telling the employees of Debenhams who were protesting peacefully and clearly maintaining their social distancing to move on.

Without knowing the details I had already decided who was wrong here and I found myself retweeting “The Gardaí should butt out and let people who had been wronged to protest peacefully“.

Authority is a powerful thing, it is a privilege to those who have been given it, and it should always be exercised carefully, respectfully and honestly.

When this doesn’t happen, everything falls apart.

Greg

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications, a full service Marketing, PR, Graphic Design and Digital Marketing agency with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

 

 

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Posted in Bullying, Equality, Ethics, Personal development, Reputation, Strikes | 7 Comments »

Connecting Head and Heart with Catherine Moroney, AIB

July 1, 2018

Catherine Moroney - AIB

A good buddy of mine and fellow Dublin Chamber Council member is Catherine Moroney. who also happens to be the Head of Business Banking with AIB,

I grabbed her recently for an episode of the Fuzion Win Happy podcast – I’ve been intrigued by her as she is very lovely and has clearly risen to the top of the career tree in AIB, as she holds down one of the most senior roles at the bank (how can you be so “nice” and still successful? – a fantastic role model).

How exactly did this family woman rise to the top, what was her magic?

I discovered a very interesting background as this self declared “cone head” shared stories about Paddy, her dad, about her early days growing up in Dublin, part time work in a hospital for patients with long term illness and switching from studying Archaeology in college to a job in banking!!

I pushed her hard about what it was like personally and professionally working in the bank throughout the highs of the Celtic Tiger and the colossal crash, we chatted about how the bank is handling diversity, how it is helping customers prepare for the uncertainty of Brexit and the challenge of introducing technology and not losing that connection with customers in the process.

Catherine also shares a very personal, life changing story that will shake you to your core – I’m not sure how I would cope with what she had to deal with.

Click here to listen to the show and get to know Catherine..

Enjoy…

Fuzion Win Happy Podcast

Greg 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Banking, Equality, Friendship, Irish Economy, Personal development, Podcast | Leave a Comment »

Too much, too little and two mishaps

December 10, 2017

Cliff House Hotel, Ardmore

We’ve had two wonderful days at The Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, Co. Waterford, which included the most incredible feast of fantastic food that you could imagine.

On our first night we treated ourselves to the tasting menu, which was a feast of the senses, delivered by a superb team, led by Adriaan Bartels who are passionate about great service and introducing customers to some amazing food that you would never taste otherwise.

The Wagyu beef from James Whelan Butchers was my favourite of all the amazing dishes on the tasting menu, which came with a well chosen matching wine selection of five different wines.

The following night we ate in the bar and as expected this meal was also incredible – I couldn’t resist the set menu with a selection of starters, desserts and a choice of main courses.

Of course we also indulged in a delicious breakfast each morning, which was a feast in itself.

Cliff Walk, Ardmore

Eventually it was time to leave after two fantastic days of indulgence, rest and recuperation and even some exercise as we did the breathtaking Cliff Walk and a long walk on Ardmore beach.

We headed back to Cork as we were due at the Cork Chamber Christmas lunch, which was at Fota Resort.

After all of the rich food we had eaten over the two days at The Cliff House, I was in the horrors at the thought of eating another morsel of food!

At Fota the perplexed waiters and waitresses came to us a few times questioning why we didn’t want the smoked salmon starter – was there something wrong, did we have special dietary requirements?

I explained that my special dietary requirement was that I didn’t need a starter as I was simply stuffed!!

I managed to eat most of the main course and I did have one little taste of the dessert – I was glad when the meal was over with, as I just wasn’t able.

I glanced around the room at the capacity crowd as together we ate the fine food, and drank the wine and indulged in the satisfaction of a positive year and a well earned Christmas break that would soon be here.

“What are your plans for Christmas?” and “Are you taking much time off?” were the popular questions being asked at each table.

I reflected on my uncomfortably full stomach and the room full of festive spirits, and I thought of those who were cold and miserable today and would love nothing more than a hot meal in a warm room, let alone entertain any thoughts of an indulgent Christmas with friends and family.

I also reflected on a thought provoking podcast that I had listened to on the journey to the Cliff House, just two days before. It was the Legends and Losers podcast by Christopher Lochhead and the particular episode featured the inspirational founder of ‘The Giving Spirit’, Tom Bagamane. This is a non-profit in L.A. that helps the huge number of homeless people in the city.

One of the big messages in the episode was that most people are just two mishaps away from being homeless – job loss, poor health, relationship breakdown, bereavement and mental problems are all mishaps that can easily throw any of us upside down, if they come knocking at our door.

Many of the homeless are not the stereotypes that we may often think they are.

Kathleen O'Sullivan

This morning I read about 43 year old, Kathleen O’Sullivan who had been found dead, wrapped in blankets in a doorway in Cork city. Apparently, ‘big hearted, kind, caring’ Kathleen who was suffering from emphysema and pleurisy hadn’t recovered from the death of her child a number of years ago.

We all deserve our breaks and we most definitely deserve to enjoy the fruits of our labour, but we mustn’t forget about those less fortunate than us, and remember that we are all just two mishaps away from being on the streets.

Merry Christmas to all..

A big thanks to Bernard MacNamee who brought me these powerful lyrics from the Kirsty McColl song, “Walking Down Madison”

From an uptown apartment to a knife on the A train
It’s not that far
From the sharks in the penthouse to the rats in the basement
It’s not that far
To the bag lady frozen asleep in the park
Oh no, it’s not that far

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications, a full-service agency that offers Marketing, PR and Branding  services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Charities, Equality, Holidays, Homeless, Homelessness, Hospitality, Relaxation, Travel | 2 Comments »

Is age diversity the biggest opportunity?

October 28, 2017

Fintech 20

I was thrilled to be the moderator on one of the discussion panels at the fantastic FinTech conference at UCD organised by Simon Cocking and his team from Irish Tech News.

There are clearly many opportunities in this dynamic sector and the jam packed agenda featured startups in the space, established businesses, financiers and angel investors as well as sponsors with a vested interest in the sector.

One of the observations that was made on the day was (as usual) about the gender mix in the room, which was I’m guessing, about 75/25% male versus female.

This probably reflects the tech sector generally as it just seems to attract more males than females – the event was a free to attend event.

Mary McKenna, an Angel Investor and a great person into bargain, shared her philosophy about how she chooses projects to invest in. While the project or idea always has to be great and have an element of ‘doing good’ she looks for great, committed people in that business to drive it forward.

Her other critical criteria is that the founders must be female!

A few (including me!) immediately questioned her logic for taking this position – were females better, could they be trusted more, did they bring special qualities to the table? Why Mary??

Mary’s answer was really simple – it’s my money and I can do what I want with it. I’m choosing to invest in females and that’s that! There was a collective shrug of the shoulders in the auditorium. Fair enough….

Mary might miss out on great projects and bigger opportunities, that also do good because of her narrow criteria, but it is her money and her prerogative.

If the gender equality police had their way this would be a crime – if it was a stated preference for male founders I’m guessing there would be total outrage!! (equality must play both ways people).

Age Diversity

On one of the panels, which was discussing the challenge of attracting talent, inevitably the topic of male versus female was raised. One of the panellists changed the diversity focus to age instead of gender, which they felt was a more relevant one worthy of more discussion.

To emphasise the point he went on to explain a recent recruitment experience that he had in their company. He was explaining the value of recruiting older people instead of the obsession about millennials – recently they employed an older person and I sat up to hear a little more…

Someone in their sixties maybe? – he was trying to make a point, after all.

It was someone in their forties!!

As a 52 year old I was shifting uneasily in my seat as I reckoned if I was not self employed, many would not even consider me for a job.

I’ve been seeing quite a few revealing articles on this topic recently – one in particular makes some great arguments for the importance of age diversity in business,

An article on the Chron, tech website says: “Companies that employ workers in wide ranges of age have the advantage of creating a dynamic, multi-generational workforce — with a diverse range of skill sets — that is beneficial to the company”

Specifically they list the following advantages:

Diverse Skill Sets – Each age group brings their own unique skills and talents. Young employees are likely to have a strong grasp on the use of high-tech business mediums and more mature professionals often have exceptional interpersonal skills and perform well in environments where traditional in-person communication is used.

Technology – While the younger generation have grown up with technology all generations are using it.

Business Skills – Just as younger generations are credited with having good working knowledge of business technology, more mature members of a workforce have the advantage of traditional business skills.

Mentoring – Employees of all ages have the opportunity to teach, share and learn from one another.

Continuity – A mix of maturity and experience with the vitality, energy and rawness of youth is likely to create a strong mix that ensures a strong identity and culture that protects continuity of the business

So..while we are all getting quite obsessed about the boys versus girls, please don’t forget about the old fogies in their forties, fifties, sixties and beyond – we have a lot to offer!

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications, a full-service agency that offers Marketing, PR and Branding  services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Equality, Gender equality, Innovation, Personal development, Teamwork | 2 Comments »

The same ticket but not the same

April 16, 2017

We were on the North East Corridor train heading out from Penn Station in New York to Metro Park in New Jersey to spend a few days with my brother Colin and his family.

On a commuter train to suburbia it’s hard not to observe the other passengers and wonder about their stories and their lives.

There was a guy sitting across from us, I’m guessing in his twenties dressed all in black with headphones on – every now and then he would sing along in Spanish. Many of the public signs here are in English and Spanish, which surprised me.

There was an African American guy, again in his twenties wearing a green hoodie and a baseball cap under that, also listening to his music.

An older guy sat alongside us wearing grey tracksuit bottoms and a grey top and an unusual pair of Crocs on his feet. He also had a crutch so this probably explained the footwear. He looked a little dishevelled so maybe he wasn’t having the best of days.

The ticket collector came around – he takes your ticket, then produces another ticket, punches a hole in this and then clips it behind you under a little metal clip. He does this for each of the people around us.

He comes to the guy next to us, the grey tracksuit guy, who takes his ticket from under his sock and produces it for inspection.

“Tear it in half” the ticket officer tells him. The passenger looks confused.

“Tear it in half” the ticket officer repeats, this time with a little more intent.

He looks confused and asks “Why?”

“I’m not touching that, it’s been in your sock” he says.

The poor guy in the tracksuit never felt better I’m sure. His bad day, week, month, year or decade was confirmed in front of his fellow travellers and he quietly accepted this instruction and tore his ticket in half.

The ticket officer was able to go ahead with his job without having to touch the offensive ticket.

This was an unpleasant and unnecessary exchange between two strangers and at what cost?

Would it have been so hard just to take the piece of paper from this fellow human being and treat it like all those other pieces of paper, equally and with respect?

However, we are not equal.

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion Communications, a full service agency that offers Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Bullying, Communications, Equality, Handling Complaints, Homelessness, Staff training | Leave a Comment »

Time to Prioritise Caring

December 30, 2016

Caring

As we roll into another year we inevitably start thinking about the things we have achieved and the things we want and wish for in the new year.

If I was to express my wishes for next year in one word I would choose the word “Caring“.

I’m not sure if it is just now that I feel there is a real deficit of caring in the world, if it is just what I am seeing and reading or whether it is a reflection of my age and if I am starting to think and observe things differently?

I am worried that there is not enough caring in the world and I feel that this year has plummeted with awful incidents in Nice, Berlin, Aleppo and some of the horribleness that we witnessed in the United States by the President Elect, Donald Trump in his campaign.

Lessons in how to win elections were absorbed by a new generation and “caring” isn’t quite the word that comes to mind when you reflect on what we saw being played out for months and months in the lead up to the awful result.

Closer to home our year ended in Ireland with the homeless coming together under the simple ‘Home Sweet Home‘ banner and they occupied an unused office building, Apollo House to put much needed roofs over heads and put a public spotlight on this big issue, which is getting worse and worse. The homeless need this as they can’t go on strike to get attention.

We heard the involvement of high profile Irish musicians including Glen Hansard and Hozier being sadly criticised by some in the media as being a stunt by them to raise their popularity!

What has happened with the way we think about things?

The courts moved in double quick time (they can when they want to) incredibly to process an injunction against the occupants.

The very sad “win” was that the homeless were allowed stay in the disused office building until January 11th – Merry Christmas!!

When living in a disused office block over Christmas is considered a win for those poor temporary residents we have arrived at a very poor state of affairs. Unfortunately this was a win for them – can you imagine?

My wish for the new year is that we start genuinely caring for each other, that we teach our children the importance of caring and let them witness it everyday, that we teach caring in our schools, that we make caring a priority in our workplaces, that caring becomes part of the values that companies live by and that we put caring for people in our communities, on our roads, in our cities and countries before any other criteria.

Let’s start caring.

Happy New Year and a big thank you to all the readers of my blog posts – see you next year!!

Greg

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Strategic Communications, Marketing, PR, Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Blogging, Charities, Equality, Ethics, Family, Friendship, Homelessness, Motivation, Parenting, Politics, Racism, Reputation, Strikes, Teamwork, Tourism | 3 Comments »

Why a scheme just for female entrepreneurs?

May 26, 2016

Female entrepreneurship

A particular tender caught my attention today.

The organisation/body were looking for a provider:”to develop and implement a tailored work programme to address the skills, enterprise and capability gaps of rural nascent female entrepreneurs”

Any scheme that encourages entrepreneurship is a great thing but specifically creating an initiative that only people who have certain “physical attributes” seems to be unfair and in my opinion reeks of inequality.

Is it even constitutional?

I don’t think it’s right – what do you think?

Encourage entrepreneurship in everyone!!

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Equality, Motivation | Leave a Comment »

Macho politics and the need for femininity

April 8, 2016

Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin

If you mention gender quotas to me you will probably sense my temperature rise and start to notice the steam emerging from different parts of my body!

I want the best person to get the job but I do absolutely believe that we need to do everything to make sure this can be a woman or a man with no disadvantage to either.

However (this is huge coming from me!) watching the political standoff between Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, the independent candidates and the other parties as Ireland struggles to form a government reminds me of some of the key messages I heard recently at the Network Ireland, International Women’s Day event.

At the conference Gabrielle Motolla (a very impressive American photographer who lives in Iceland) spoke about the worldwide economic crash and a profound comment that was made at the time that “the banking systems lack of femininity caused many of the problems”

It wasn’t that there were too many men involved but the point was there was too much “masculinity” in the mix – too much testosterone, too much macho stuff, too much bravado, too much risk taking, too much ultra competitiveness and too many egos recklessly driving the banking system off the cliff.

All of these characteristics can be demonstrated by men or women but they are typically masculine traits so a gender balance could provide some protection against the potentially dangerous excesses of these traits.

This point really impacted on me – I understood exactly what she was saying and I can see the danger myself of too much of any particular trait in an organisation.

I met a Canadian woman at the same conference who operates a large energy company in Canada and we spoke about this issue. She’s not in favour of quotas but she explained that in her business it would be virtually impossible to manage a team of all men and it would be just as difficult with a team of all women.

In her experience the guys are just too macho and the women are too passive and cautious – she reckons a balance works best and in her industry she reckoned 60/40 works best and this is what she strives for when assembling teams.

With our political impasse at the moment I notice that nearly all of the posturing, which is getting us nowhere is very masculine.

We desperately need to sort this out and get our country back on track – maybe we should introduce some femininity and get this process moving?

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Communications, Equality, Gender equality, Irish Politics | 4 Comments »

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