You need people to do things and to do them in a certain way, but so often they just don’t get it. To paraphrase Nina Simone, the Animals, Elvis Costello and many others, you’re intentions may be good and you don’t want to be misunderstood. So how do you get people to do things? By telling […]
How to Do Meaningful Meetings with Purpose and Results
People spend an inordinate amount of their lives in meetings. More often than not, these meetings do not achieve satisfactory results, despite best intentions. Our time on this planet is finite and none of us can afford to waste time that could be dedicated to achieving something meaningful. There is something about getting a group […]
Empowerment – Making it Work Operationally
If you look up “empowerment” on Google there are over 100 million items. So what do we mean by empowerment and why is it such a tricky matter? What tools can we use to make sure empowerment is done more effectively at an operational level? In any organization, things need to get done and people […]
How to Create a Systemic Strategy
Strategy is about identifying a direction and creating robust solutions to move coherently in that direction. It involves identifying the systemic changes that need to be created. There are three main phases for this: what to change what to change to how to make the change happen For each of these phases, there is […]
What’s a Priority? Thinking it Through
We need structure and priorities at every level in order to lead constructive and productive lives and to deliver whatever it is we produce as companies and individuals. So the practical problem becomes, how do we decide what a priority is? When we’re faced with something we have to accomplish or a project, where do […]
Come together, right now! Technology for Collaboration
New technological platforms are emerging almost daily to allow people to come together and collaborate. This should be good news because every human activity aimed at producing a result requires collaboration. Even more good news is that this is very healthy in evolutionary terms: collaboration is more effective than competition. The very success of our species […]
The Risk of Not Working to a Goal Plan? Just Filling Your Time
No matter how busy we may be doing stuff during the day, that “busyness” is not necessarily a measure of progress. In fact, if we haven’t established a goal plan for our work for the year, quarter, month or day, then we really don’t know what we’re doing or why. Unless, of course, our goal […]
Procrastination – Don’t Let it Bite
Procrastination is one of the greatest enemies of productivity and can play havoc with project management. On top of that, it can chip away at self-esteem. How can we help ourselves and others to overcome something so insidious and yet so common? Can’t Do Won’t Do? One of the reasons for procrastination is reasonably simple […]
Protecting Projects from Chaos: A Tool
Projects can easily get out of hand. They are subject to the chaos that can arise when human interactions are not governed by precise guidelines. Entropy exists and it affects behaviours as well everything else. When we use the Transition Tree Tool to break projects down into actions we are protecting projects from chaos: at […]
Focus on The Goal, or How to Walk on a Tightrope
In business, and in life, there can be times when it feels as though you are walking a tightrope. Every step is hazardous. It’s a scary prospect and it takes great skill to keep your footing. While speaking to an entrepreneur recently we were reminded of the anecdote of a Rabbi who was confident that […]