Blog
Take a look at recent insights in leadership, strategy and more.
You can’t really assess your staff…
... unless you’re sure you’ve provided effective leadership. If you’re looking for the people who work for you to be self-motivated and highly productive, you can’t sensibly begin to assess whether...
An intervention needs to be an intervention
It takes a certain intensity to make something different happen. Merely exposing people to new ideas probably isn’t going to be enough if the hoped-for change is in any way an uncomfortable or...
Only the best survive
There’s a reason why the classics are the classics - they're good stuff. We tend to favour the modern - and yes, we do need progressive ideas - but for some questions, the answers were plain 2,500...
Accurately discerning responsibility and authority
Events of last week—featuring, in particular, some troubles my son is having with another boy on his school bus—showed just how important it is to discern accurately who is best-placed to take which...
What’s your vision for yourself?
You may be familiar with the idea of having a vision for other people—other people you work with, individuals you lead or coach, either formally or informally, or perhaps family members. That vision...
Are you a carrier of non-verbal confusion?
We’re accustomed to making sure we don’t send mixed messages... As long as we don’t actually say anything contradictory, people around us won’t be confused and will instead move forward on the basis...
So you survived the recession…
So you successfully steered your business through the recession—a significant achievement which no doubt took a lot of courage, determination and energy, and probably involved a fair amount of pain....
Confusing being busy with moving forward
It can feel like we're working very hard. We probably are working very hard. But are we working on the right things? We're responding to all sort of external inputs and handling them well - keeping...
If it’s only when people are leaving…
If it's only when people are leaving that they can tell the truth in an organisation, then we have a problem. And yet that's often the way it seems to be. If it's only when there's no longer...
Holding back evolution
Sometimes it’s tempting to try and hold back the process of change—we may think we are strong enough to hold it at bay. We may even be successful for a time. The trouble is... The forces of...
If we’re serious about collaboration…
Everyone seems to want autonomy at the moment—well, perhaps not quite everybody. The trouble is... Complete autonomy means no influence. If we’re serious about collaboration, we have to share power....
Falling down on the follow-up?
Where is the weakest link in your process? For many of us, it’s in our capacity to complete the chunkier action steps which are needed to implement what we agreed at an initial meeting. Not so easy...
Dragging it out of them (or us)
It’s remarkable how damaging it is to a relationship when we have to drag information out of someone—when we sense we aren’t being told everything and our time may be being wasted because we’re...
Can they speak the truth?
It’s striking how often middle level to senior people in organisations say they doubt the ordinary folk will feel safe speaking frankly about the business and what they see needs attention in front...
How others see us, and what to do about it
How others see us is very important in determining our results and what happens in our lives. Many factors affect that, of course: Our track record and so on. However, a big part of it is how we see...