Coaching – a partnership of trust
Whether in the sporting arena or in the office it is all too easy to see the coaching relationship in terms of hierarchy; between someone who needs help and someone who can provide the answers. Whilst that level of relationship may work on certain superficial levels, the best coaches operate on an entirely different plane. […]
Improving Your Decision-Making Strategies – 5 Tips
In 1979, Bill Gates was 23 years old and looking for someone to invest in Microsoft for about $30 million. Ross Perot turned it down as “unreasonable.” Obviously, years later, Perot told The Seattle Times, “It was the worst decision I ever made.” Other poor decisions have been made by “big boys” in the corporate […]
Ignore managers at your peril! Your L&D strategy won’t work without them
Managers are a crucial link between the business and employees but how many organisations focus in on them when designing or deploying learning strategies? In this article Stephanie Morgan of Bray Leino Learning looks at how L&D can leverage the relationship with managers to develop more impactful interventions. If you're interested in getting to grips […]
Leadership development: a leap of faith?
Justin Hughes writes on issues relating to team and organisational performance. A former Red Arrows pilot, he is now Managing Director of Mission Excellence, a consultancy focused on improving clients' execution – their ability to close the gap between what gets talked about and planned, and what gets done. Justin previously spent 12 years as an RAF […]
Managing Creative Talent – Training Exercise Needed
I am running some leadership development sessions for a marketing agency. One of their problems is managing really creative people. They have a high turnover of staff and often lose talented people to competitors, clients or other agencies. Most of the executive team have good delivery or creative skills but not so good man management […]
Three reasons why building from within builds customer service heroes
Business growth creates new staffing opportunities but it can also bring recruitment challenges. Think about the lengthy notice and inductions periods, for a start. Strong succession planning provides a more seamless process and ensures a bank of motivated individuals who are ready to step up when needed. They are immediately up to speed and in […]
Growing business? Grow your people
As a leader, what are you doing to grow your people? No, we’re not talking here about sticking them out in a field and hoping that with the right soil and the right water they will suddenly become more proactive, more innovative or more engaged. Having said that, with the Glastonbury festival on at the time […]
Building on strength
Your people are your greatest asset. This may be a cliché, it may even be one which is overused but have you ever stopped to think what it means in practice. After all, your assets are things which you use to make the business work or to represent the worth of the business but should […]
Coffee Briefing: Positive psychology, learning networks & the potential of QR codes
Welcome to the first week of (questionable) British summertime! We've got another handy round-up of L&D blogs, news and opinion for you to peruse over your coffee break. Let us know which articles you've enjoyed reading this week, and let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Leadership – 'Power over' and 'power to' (Anne […]
Leadership, bullfighting, the Pope & spectatorism
‘Spectatorism is a modern disease from which many suffer. Symptoms include a stubborn refusal to act, combined with a strong preference for observation and criticism rather than participation…’ ‘Among spectatorism’s victims are those academics and writers who like to theorise rather than take part…’ The above quotes (and the final one below) were from Luke […]
Leadership & values in social media: Should your CEO be on Twitter?
I blogged recently about an exchange on twitter with the CEO of an e-learning company who, in a tweetchat, referred to his staff as his "subordinates" – a description which I challenged. I won't rehash the discussion that followed here because I want to talk about something else; something related, but different. I want to […]
Motivation is the ‘root cause’ of culture and performance
Until now, companies have never been able to define what really makes their employees tick, or to measure how motivated they or their teams are. But what actually is motivation and how can it really drive us as people? Combining the results of research in 2015 from Gallup, Blessing White and Towers Watson, an average […]
Leading development
If I asked you to name the top reasons why organisational development (OD) fails in many companies what would your answer be? Setting aside the obvious answer, that for some leaders the day-to-day is so all-consuming they never get around to looking towards the future, it’s a fair bet that lack of resources, resistance to […]
Soft skills secrets: let’s look at President John F Kennedy
Born on this day, 29th May 1917, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was president for 1036 days, has had over 40,000 books written about him and is the president that most Americans would like to see immortalised on Mount Rushmore. Famously charming, we look at JFK’s soft skills style secrets. JFK’s childhood shows little sign of the […]
OD through innovation
How do you approach organisational development? Is it imposed as a top-down highly defined structure or is it delivered as an intrinsic part of a culture which seeks to deliver solutions through innovation? I admit that these are two polar ends of a sliding scale but your answer could indicate your organisation’s current level of […]
A culture of development
Why do so many OD efforts fall by the wayside? It’s hard to understand isn’t it? After all the effort that the leadership team have gone to in order to define the strategy and with the OD team tasked with identifying and delivering the change required in order to deliver the strategy, what can go […]
Organisation Structure – Case Studies
Hi I am developing an exercise for 3 groups of five people each. In exercies, I need them to prepare vision, mission and revise organisational structure. I am looking for 15 different case studies to keep it unique to everyone. I have already developed 5 but was wondering if there are any sources available to reuse case […]
Directing organisational development
In my last article (investing in good governance) I concluded by highlighting the importance of good governance, of having a boardroom team which fully understands the potential which can be gained from making decisions which will have a lasting impact on the organisation. That article was looking at return on investment but my concluding comments […]
It’s one thing to create a culture of innovation, but how do you sustain it?
And they all lived happily ever after. The trouble is, successfully building a culture of innovation isn’t like a fairy story. Sure there have been triumphs and disasters along the way; moments when the plot seemed to be leading you inexorably towards failure, or twists of fate which led you along unexpected pathways, but innovation […]
Engaging your people in the innovation journey
There are many roads to building a culture of innovation within an organisation and one of the key tasks for the leadership team is to identify and scope the transition matrix which optimises results for their own business. Some may opt for a business wide transition, whilst others may prefer to smooth the way via […]
