Blog
Take a look at recent insights in leadership, strategy and more.
Why do we resist help so much?
It's remarkable really, how hard we work to stop others helping us. Why is that? Is it because the help is clearly rubbish? Is it because the help doesn't actually apply to us? Is it because the...
Demanding and accommodating
It's good to be accommodating. It helps make a reality of collaboration and getting a group of people working together. Sometimes though... We need to be demanding. Some roles involve directing an...
The Swiss cheese model of success
The Swiss cheese model is central to thinking about systemic failure. The idea is that each potential factor, which, when combined, could create a condition in which an accident could occur, is like...
It’s not a question of whether you’re interested or not…
...it's a question of whether you need the knowledge. Sometimes we base our choice of what to learn about by what interests us, but actually to succeed in our goals, we need to learn about what's...
Putting yourself out there to be judged
If we hope to have influence—to stimulate something better happening—we have to put ourselves out there to be judged. If we don't, nobody will know we have anything to offer and nothing different...
Is the status quo better funded?
Inertia is usually better resourced than change—better staffed, better financed, and better organised. It's usually easier to get paid to do something that reinforces the status quo than it is to do...
In making plans for work…
...it is sometimes necessary to take into account the actions of other people. It was a week of Winston Churchill quotes last week, though not, in fact, this one: "In making plans for war, it is...
How do you tell if you are over-contributing?
It seems our fellow workshop participant thinks what she has to say is more important than the organised speaker's material. It's a smallish group admittedly, but the rest of us are there...
Why help is needed
W. Edwards Deming said "Help must come from outside because a system is not capable of understanding itself." In other words, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees. This is true whether we're...
Personality traits: self-reinforcing?
If we decide, for whatever reason, to be interested in detail rather than the big picture, for example, or possibilities rather than procedures, and we find that that (unconscious) choice works for...
Standing for balance
Do “they” want to know what you stand for? Do they want you to be on one side or the other? Much easier for them to deal with you that way; clearer too, I suppose. But wrong, if you actually stand...
Not change but coercion
With sufficient power and authority, we can make something different happen. We can get an organisation to produce different results. We can make people comply. But that isn’t really change... It’s...
What if we don’t like the implications?
We may dismiss certain kinds of learning... Now it could be that the learning is plain wrong. Or... It could be that we don’t like the implications. One way, we’re right; the other, we’re making a...
The pull of the tribe
Have you noticed... Spend any time at all around a group of people, especially a large group of people or a big organisation, with at least some cohesion, genuine purpose, and shared values—in other...
Total control—total paralysis?
We're addicted to control—control of our businesses, our public services, and our non-profits and charities. It seems so logical: The tighter we can nail down what happens in our organisations, the...