Latest Posts


  • What If We Replaced All Our Managers With Robots? 

    Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done Peter Drucker Management is the greatest inefficiency in any organisation. Many of you will be familiar with the work of Gary Hamel , but his… Continue reading

    What If We Replaced All Our Managers With Robots? 
  • How To Kill Doomed Projects

    The challenge for managers in the “can-do” culture of business is to distinguish between belief as a key driver of success—and belief as something that can blind managers to a project’s ultimate failure – Isabelle Royer  It’s always easier to… Continue reading

    How To Kill Doomed Projects
  • Why We Are So Bad At Defining Problems

    If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions. – Albert Einstein I don’t know whether Einstein ever used those words. It may be just like… Continue reading

    Why We Are So Bad At Defining Problems
  • Does Regulation Really Stifle Innovation?

    Last week I did a presentation to a group of managers when the issue of governance and regulation ‘getting in the way’ of innovation came up. People often think regulations stifle innovation, new business and services. They assume that regulators… Continue reading

    Does Regulation Really Stifle Innovation?
  • The No.1 Problem With The Digital Workplace

    “Collaboration is an essential skill of the digital economy. And yet how to collaborate productively is hardly ever taught either in universities or in the workplace.” – Gerry McGovern It’s only a couple of months since I posted Why We… Continue reading

    The No.1 Problem With The Digital Workplace
  • Four Factors Hindering Transformation

    The problem with good service design is that you don’t notice it. It’s only when you experience truly bad design that you appreciate the good stuff. That’s why so few organisations are design led. They focus on designing out the… Continue reading

    Four Factors Hindering Transformation
  • Why Story Will Always Beat Statistics

    Data is not fact and fact is often just a hypothesis anyway. We humans design how data is created and we humans are the ones who interpret data and draw conclusions from it. Therefore, data will always be inherently fallible… Continue reading

    Why Story Will Always Beat Statistics
  • How To Avoid Corporate Initiativitis

    We’ve never felt so busy at work, and never been less engaged. 90% of people say they expect to find a substantial degree of joy at work, yet only 37% report that they do. Many of our organisations remain afflicted… Continue reading

    How To Avoid Corporate Initiativitis
  • How To Kill Ideas

    We were asked a really good question last week with the visit to Bromford of the Disruptive Innovators Network. How long should you spend on an idea? In the early days of Bromford Lab we had a 12 WEEKS MAX rule.… Continue reading

    How To Kill Ideas
  • What We Can Learn From The Oldest Companies in The World

    Shigemitsu Kongo, a Japanese Buddhist temple builder, formed his construction company Kongo Gumi in in 578 AD. His company built relationships with their customers that lasted for 1,400 years, surviving through many wars and natural disasters,  just like their temples. It… Continue reading

    What We Can Learn From The Oldest Companies in The World