Paul Taylor
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Avoiding The Yo-Yo Effect of ‘Corporate Change Convulsions’
Speeches you never hear at a corporate conference: “….. Our Transformation Programme is going to be small and imperfect. We are going to do many small things that probably won’t work straight away.’ – Chris Bolton In the early 1960s, a New… Continue reading
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5 Reasons You Need To Question What Customers Are Telling You
Despite little evidence of impact, each year millions of pounds are spent on market research, focus groups, and ‘coproduction’. The danger of listening to customers is you end up focusing on wants not needs. Often what a customer wants is… Continue reading
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Ending The Myth Of Collaboration
The best organisational cultures are tolerant of the loner, the thinker. – John Wade “If I was you,” said a colleague recently “now would be a very good time to involve customers, to get more people involved”. No, I thought,… Continue reading
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The Big Problem With Change Programmes
People don’t resist change, they resist bullshit – Peter Vander Auwera A friend of mine told me last week that their organisation was about to begin its third change management programme in just seven years. Each of the two preceding programmes had a… Continue reading
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Continuous Partial Attention: Designing A Less Distracted Future Of Work
Calm, focused, undistracted, the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts—the faster, the better – Nicholas Carr ,… Continue reading
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The Number 1 Priority For Your CEO: Building Trust
Silence is now deeply dangerous—a tax on truth – Richard Edelman Trust is the most valuable commodity in your organisation – although it’s probably not something you talk about often, much less attempt to measure. For the past 16 years,… Continue reading
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If You’re Still Shying Away From Using Technology To Improve Customer Experience – You’re Doomed
You must relentlessly ask: Is this harder for the customer to do? Relentlessly. Because, today, in an increasing number of areas, if it’s not easy-to-use, it’s dead in the water. – Gerry McGovern Re-entry into the world of work after… Continue reading
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Change, Transformation and Complex Problems: My Top 5 Posts of 2017
One of my 2017 resolutions was to blog more consistently. The glory days in terms of the readership and reach of this site peaked in 2014 before a decline in 15/16. The problem was lack of discipline. My blogging lesson… Continue reading
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Why We Need To Learn To Love Project Managers
‘There isn’t a child alive who dreams of being a project manager’ – so said Scott Berkun. He pointed out that project managers can unintentionally reinforce their work as (let’s be honest) dull – by trying to get everyone to pay… Continue reading
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How To Kill Innovation In 10 Easy Steps
Many of our organisations, without realising it, act as inhibitors of innovation. Rules and protocols are put in place — often for very good reasons — that preserve the status quo. Over time, organisations develop a set of social norms… Continue reading
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The Case Against Digital Transformation
Something that’s being sold to you as more convenient may well be a lost social interaction that you’ll never get back – Ben Holliday, Convenience Isn’t Digital Last week a friend of ours told me a story about trying to get some… Continue reading
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How The 9-5 Saps Our Creativity and Harms Our Productivity
From ten to eleven, have breakfast for seven; From eleven to noon, think you’ve come too soon; From twelve to one, think what’s to be done; From one to two, find nothing to do; From two to three, think it… Continue reading
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How To Design For Better Outcomes
Our job is to the mind the gap between the bureaucracy of our systems and the opportunities in our communities – Cormac Russell Sometimes it’s preferable to pull the plug on a service before you see it collapse in front of… Continue reading
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An A-Z of Modern Jargon
Yesterday a colleague who had been faced with a lot of long documents filled with confusing language came out with a great phrase: I didn’t know where to start. So, I didn’t There’s some science to this. Faced with choice… Continue reading
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The Problem With Finding Answers
Don’t Look for a Great Idea. Look for a Good Problem – Greg Satell Yesterday I spent five and half hours in a room with my colleagues Carole and Simon trying to get to the root of a problem. Three… Continue reading
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Why Transformation Fails – And How To Avoid It
The concept that 70% of change and transformation programmes fail emerged in the mid 1990’s. There’s actually little evidence that this is true. The 70% figure seems to have emerged because of a lack of clarity about what success looks… Continue reading
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How Not To Solve The Health, Housing and Care Crisis
Crisis (noun) ‘a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger’. ‘a time when a difficult or important decision must be made.’ The housing crisis can no longer be ignored. Neither it appears can the crisis in health. And nor can the… Continue reading
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Don’t Let Busyness Kill Your Creativity
Last week I was getting a drink when a colleague asked me “So, you busy as usual?” I took a second to avoid my kneejerk affirmative response and went for it: “No – we’ve decided to slow down. Give ourselves… Continue reading
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We Need To Promote Outcomes At Work Not Presenteeism
“Presenteeism is the biggest threat to UK workplace productivity. Workers coming in and doing nothing is more dangerous than absenteeism” – Professor Cary Cooper A full car park and people appearing busy at their desks is zero evidence that any… Continue reading
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How To Find And Nurture Digital Readiness
When someone in public service says, ‘I don’t use social media. No one wants to know what I had for breakfast!’ I hear, ‘I don’t have the vaguest interest in understanding how an increasing number of citizens get information or… Continue reading
