Blog
Take a look at recent insights in leadership, strategy and more.
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 unfamiliar one—the issue could be out of conscious awareness apart from...
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 years ago. And often, there’s less clutter. Back then, we maybe had...
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 action: Us as parents, the bus driver, the parents of the other boy,...
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 is your guiding image of how they could be or who they could...
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 of what they hear us say. So the thinking goes. Unfortunately, it’s...
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. You learned a great deal. You established a tight grip. You had good...
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 everybody happy. For the time being anyway. From the outside though,...
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 anything at stake that people can be real, then we're going to suffer from...
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 evolution will eventually become so powerful that when we finally succumb to...
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. We have to accept we won’t get our way on everything. If we want some...
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 to get these done when existing tasks are pressing. Sometimes it helps...
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 trying to solve a problem without all the facts. Arguably, this was a...
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 of top management. Where that sentiment exists—and it’s more the rule...
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 ourselves. Surprisingly perhaps... The limiting factor in what we...
Getting over something
How far do you need to go into the future before the present will seem like the past? When we’re struggling to get over some incident or upset, I find it can be a great help to think forward into the future—far enough into the future that present or very recent...