The Blame Game
Blame has a certain appeal. It is fast, emotionally powerful and gives a complicated situation a simple outcome. Something went wrong. Someone must have caused it. Find the person, blame them and shame them to prevent the error reoccurring.
AI Won't Change Your Organisation. Culture Will
There is a compelling fable of the AI mission that goes like this: the technology arrives, people use it, productivity improves, and the organisation becomes something more capable than it was. It is a useful narrative. And in most organisations, it is not what happens.
How Does Your Boss React to Failure?
If you hear swearing, spitting or even aggression, it suggests failure is not something your boss tolerates too well. Those kinds of responses are unlikely to encourage anyone in the team to take risks or even suggest innovative ideas. Prevention of failure becomes as much a goal as h …
When Failure Is Useful - And When It Isn't.
In the first blog of this series, I argued that failure does not need to be treated as the enemy of progress. But there is an important qualification: not all failure deserves the same response.
Team Coaching: A Buyer's Guide
The term team coaching covers a wide range of potential solutions from one-off workshops to longer term sustained engagement designed to change how a team behaves and operates. This guide sets out what to look for at each step and what to look for when choosing potential providers.
Does My Team Need Coaching? Five Signs Worth Taking Seriously
Most teams function adequately. Work generally gets done, there is a collective sense of who is in the team and the team's purpose is generally recognised even if just by the label 'marketing' or 'customer service' for example. To many, this is what working in teams represents. A semi …
What Does Team Coaching Actually Deliver: The Business Case in Numbers
There are a multitude of ‘soft metrics’ that make up the case for team coaching - people feel more connected, conversations become more honest, there is a greater sense of shared purpose. The felt experience of team coaching is real and it matters. But it is not the whole story, and i …
Corporate-Washing: What Happens When Employees See the Dirty Laundry too?
Company corporate social relations’ (CSR) policy can sometimes tread a fine line between benevolence - making a real difference to society - and what could be called ‘corporate-washing’: creating a veneer of worthiness while leaving the underlying reality of the business unchanged or …
What Job Descriptions Get Wrong
Most job descriptions are written as if motivation begins and ends with a list of tasks and responsibilities. They inform candidates what they will do, but give far less attention to why the work matters, who benefits from it, how much ownership it carries, or what kind of growth it m …