Blog
Take a look at recent insights in leadership, strategy and more.
New options made possible by your progress—have you noticed?
Sometimes they creep up on us... New options, that is. We don’t notice at first. We’re so busy working on our current options—well, actually, our old options—that we don’t notice new ones have opened up. I know I’ve done this—kept going with something that’s no longer...
Interrupting the patterns—once we notice them
Sometimes it feels like we're actors in a drama, just showing up on stage and saying our lines. We're creatures of habit. We repeat the same patterns over and over, unconsciously for the most part. That's also true of our interactions with other people. We go through...
Corporate organisations—more mindful of the human being or less?
We seem to live in divergent times... On the one hand, corporate organisations are becoming more procedural, more numbers-driven, more top-down in their approach. (That’s a generalisation of course, and perhaps not even an accurate one, and there are certainly notable...
Being real vs. being consistent
We want people to be consistent. It makes it easier. We know where we stand. Or do we? Where we stand might be an illusion, if the other person isn’t being real. Being genuinely consistent requires us to be certain, but as Richard Bandler said, “Any time you feel...
How do you finish the unfinishable?
Depending on our background, certain kinds of tasks are easier to tackle than others because different types of work require different mindsets... Smaller, more discrete tasks can be worked on until they’re finished. (Good to do the high priority ones first, but...
What do you gather round to build the team?
Engineers discussing a drawing always seem to get along well. It's a great way to strengthen relationships in the team, whether within or between organisations, and often a good activity to suggest to create a conducive atmosphere—to establish the right energy in the...
Change in here comes before change out there
We won’t achieve change in an organisation or in the world at large until we put our own house in order, whatever that may exactly entail. Our personal change work may well have a different form from what we perceive needs to happen in an organisation. On the other...
Role insecurity: Are you affected?
Most of us suffer from this at times, either on our own account, or indirectly when other people catch the affliction... We find ourselves justifying our involvement in a meeting or project, or making points to show our expertise, or maybe just to show we are present....
A strange combination of short-termism and inertia
I hadn't thought of it quite like this before... We're used to the idea that bigger organisations tend to have more inertia than smaller ones. All other things being equal, it's harder to turn a supertanker than a speedboat. The thing is, there is another issue......
Do you fight your influences?
That might seem a strange question, but think about it: Do you resist the learning which comes from your influences? Actually, I think, most of us do. Because influence means change, and change means discomfort for our ego, we tend to push back on ideas that...
Once you’ve decided what matters…
...everything else doesn’t matter. We know the benefit of clarity well enough: Getting clear about what matters in a relationship of any kind, or any other context, means we can focus our energies in the most effective way. Once we’ve decided what’s most important, we...
Acting hard—a good idea?
An organisation wonders if it has a particular problem with stress—more than is typical... I ask whether the employees believe management cares about them, really wondering to what degree that is true. The response “Oh no, we wouldn’t want that” was so striking to me...
Is it a mistake to focus when you don’t know what works?
Focus, focus, focus—the key to having an impact, making progress, gaining traction. But what if you don’t really know what works, or don’t know yet? If you’re doing something new, you’re very unlikely to get it right first time. If you had enough knowledge to hit the...
The things we don’t like may be the very things we need to learn
Sometimes we react strongly against something someone else says. Or we see other people being surprisingly critical and dismissive of what seems pretty innocuous but useful information. The very strength of the reaction might be telling us something. We tend to push...
What is the opposite of “quiet?”
It's often said that someone is "quiet', meaning that either they aren't saying much in the moment, or don't say much in general. At least, that's what it appears to mean. In the first instance, the implication is that their "state" is different from normal, either...