Helping people and organisations get out of (unproductive) ruts into (productive) grooves.
A conversation last week about the relationship between perception and reality reminded me of “Ladders of Inference”, an idea I first came across through Peter Senge’s “Fifth Discipline”. This concept was first put forward by Chris Argyris in 1970 as a way of describing the thinking process that we go through, (usually without realising it), to get from a fact to a decision or action.
Let me illustrate with an example...
Read MoreWe’ve all caught ourselves saying it, or heard others say it. Maybe we just show up for work every day. Mother’s say it, students say it, whoever we are, we’ve probably told some people this week about how busy we are. We seem to wear that as a badge, but know inside it's not a good thing.
Read MoreSuch a large amount of the work of Leaders in any sphere is to do with effective communication. The history of project failures, new strategies or change initiatives ground to a halt shows that in many cases those who are affected by the change are not consulted before the start of a project. When you change the way people work, you are challenging their principles, their beliefs and the way they are likely to have done things for many, many years.
Read MoreIn the article The Evolution of the Employee, Jacob Morgan (although spruiking his new book) makes the point that work as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. To this end he has an infographic which compares and contrasts the employee of ‘the past’ with the employee of ‘the future’, in essence giving us a picture of what our working environments increasingly look like and will continue to evolve into in the years ahead.
Read MoreEveryone has made hiring mistakes. It’s not an easy task and yet it is critical to the success of any team, department or organisation, large or small. The impact of a ‘wrong recruit’ can be devastating and is certainly more costly and painful to correct than it is to get right in the first place...
Read MoreDecision making is an important topic in a lot of companies: Who gets to decide what? What’s the process? Are decisions made in a timely fashion? How do we make good decisions? Decision making at an individual level is also an important topic...
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