In 2013 a Communications Director named Justine Sacco landed in Cape Town after a flight from New York. As she switched her phone back on she was met with two messages. The first was from someone she hadn’t spoken to for years: “I’m so sorry to see what’s happening.” The second was from her best … Continue reading How Technology Is Changing Our Conversation
Why Are Remote Workers Facing Burnout?
Employee fatigue and burnout was a wellbeing concern for many employers before the pandemic, but eight months in, the problem seems to have been exacerbated by granting people the very thing they coveted the most: unlimited flexibility.
Are we experiencing the unintended consequences of working remotely?
The Problem With An Over-Reliance On Data
“Last Saturday evening fans of Little Mix who had tuned in to BBC1 to watch the latest episode of their talent show, The Search, were instead treated to a contender for the worlds shittest PowerPoint presentation.”
The problem with data and how we’ve conflated data with truth. This has dangerous implications for our ability to understand, explain, and improve the things we care about.
A Relentless Focus On Efficiency Can Kill Innovation
Why do organisations who say they are innovative fail to put their money where their mouth is and invest in innovation in the same way Amazon do?
How To Make Decisions In A World Of Uncertainty When Not Knowing Or Being Sure Of Anything Is The Only Answer We Have (TLDR: Get comfortable with failure..)
In a high stakes environment , where people will die whatever you do next, nobody wants to talk about failure. For companies large and small, to make progress in complex situations means re-evaluating our relationship with the F Word.
How To Lose Trust During Complex Times
Why are we losing trust in leaders during the pandemic?
The story has become about the data and nothing else. Great stories help us to persuade people to take action.
Stories about data persuade people to argue about the data.
Why Do So Many People Want Us Back In The Office?
After the sudden and miraculous shift to remote work – the office fightback has well and truly begun.
What Face Masks Teach Us About Behaviour Change
Ultimately the innovation and change process begins and ends with one basic premise – listen first
COVID Accelerates Everything: Including Change Fatigue
How can our organisations cope with a coming tsunami of burnt out workers? The signs are all there that the transition to hybrid/remote working is not as painless as the Zoom and Teams enthusiasts are making out.
How Can We Move Towards A Better Normal?
We are living through an era of intense turbulence and disillusionment. Even before COVID-19 we were faced with circumstances which the scholar and critic Ziauddin Sardar has described as uncertain, rapidly changing and chaotic. He describes this as a period where the old orthodoxies are dying, but new ones have yet to be born, and … Continue reading How Can We Move Towards A Better Normal?
Smaller, Flatter, Faster. Is The Two Pizza Team Finally Going Mainstream?
This weeks post looks at the two pizza team which was popularised by Jeff Bezos.
In the early days of Amazon he instituted a rule that every internal team should be small enough that it could be fed with two pizzas.
The goal was, like almost everything Amazon does, focused on two aims: efficiency and scalability.
Is it finally the time that our organisations will make the shift to smaller teams, not just because of financial savings, but because of their increased effectiveness and productivity?
Read the post by clicking the link. And if you like it I’d really appreciate a share on your social network of choice.
Have a great weekend!
Best wishes
Paul
Why Do Bad Ideas Spread So Easily?
Bad ideas can spread much more easily than good ones.
And in a world of complex problems – it’s understandable why people reach for ideas that sound like easy solutions.
So it’s important to understand how bad ideas spread as you can use the same tactics to spread your good ones.
Can Remote Work Usher in a New Era of Creativity?
Distributed working requires a whole system change. It requires trusting people, it requires removing unnecessary management, and it requires a seismic shift in how we collaborate with others.
Nirvana or Business As Usual? Navigating The New Future Of Work
This isn’t a binary choice between the office and remote work. Instead we must consider what work used to be, what it is now and what it could be in the future.
The Problem With Constantly Finding Problems
Our brain is constantly searching for problems to fix, even when that problem is reducing. When something becomes rare, we tend to see it in places more than ever.
Anyone whose job involves reducing the prevalence of something should know that it isn’t always easy to tell when their work is done
The Regressive Power of Labelling People As Vulnerable
The paradox of employing the term of ‘vulnerability’ is that it makes people more vulnerable.
Innovating In An Age Of Uncertainty
Faced with uncertainty, those holding the purse strings will be tempted to stop the clock, peddle simplistic solutions and retreat to the past
Do You Really Know What Is Going On In Your Organisation?
We are at an inflection point: When it comes to workplace culture, there is a large gap between what leaders think is going on and what employees say is happening on the ground. The Hidden Value Of Culture Makers According to the latest Accenture report – two thirds of leaders feel they create empowering environments—in … Continue reading Do You Really Know What Is Going On In Your Organisation?
How To Prepare For The Future of Housing
Community groups and individuals have delivered the most useful support networks in a physically distanced world. So now is the time for social landlords to revisit our purpose and reflect on the non value-adding activities that our organisations are involved i
In A Post-COVID World The Manager Is The Weak Link
In an increasingly remote and distributed world of work the employees who will have the biggest impact on the most people will rarely be the official leaders at the top.
Can We Really Trust Communities To Use Common Sense?
There have been a few positives amidst the devastation of the COVID pandemic.
One is that it has reminded us of the power of social connection. People have begun supporting and caring for one another locally, with community led groups popping up to address immediate needs in ways organisations simply can’t.
