Paul Taylor
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We Need To Stop Talking About Change Or Get Comfortable With Failure
Every year businesses will embark on a series of reports , meetings, visioning sessions , training events and communication strategies. In almost every case the goal will be the same: to make fundamental changes to how business is conducted in… Continue reading
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How To Find And Kill Zombie Projects
According to Clayton Christensen , of the 30,000 new consumer products that are launched each year – 95% fail. Compare this with the public, voluntary and non-profit sectors – where hardly anything fails. The social sector must either be fantastic at launching… Continue reading
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Avoiding The Iceberg of Organisational Change
Formal reorganisation is an elaborate illusion. Reorganisation has to be part of an organisation, not something done to it – Harold Jarche The concept of the ‘iceberg of ignorance’ – that most problems in organisations are invisible to leaders, and… Continue reading
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Stop Talking, Start Experimenting
Thinking different isn’t enough, you have to act different – Jorge Barba I took a call this week from a person working for another organisation, we’ll call her Bill. Despite having a hugely supportive executive team the problems Bill faces… Continue reading
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Why Do We Still Need Managers?
“Management is not only dysfunctional, Management is also destructive” – Companies Without Managers Last week we held the first of the Bromford #inspiremelab sessions – where colleagues curated and then discussed provocations around the future of how we work. We covered… Continue reading
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What Does Your Social Media Say About Your Organisation?
Please for the love of God can we stop with the Digital by Default, the Digital by Design – It’s just life! – Amy Nettleton There’s a danger we can overthink digital. Whilst organisations grapple with the ‘cultural challenges’ of… Continue reading
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Redefining Trust In A Digital Age
Trust is not coming back. Scepticism reigns, as it should. – Gerry McGovern Since the industrial revolution, a trusting relationship between individuals and organisations has been the norm. This has shaped the way we communicate – both internally and externally.… Continue reading
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Complex Problems Require Rapid Experiments
“Multiple iterations almost always beat a single-minded commitment to building your first idea” – Peter Skillman Most of you will have taken part in the Marshmallow Challenge or a variant of it. It’s the team exercise where you get a… Continue reading
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The Rules of Digital Transformation
In five years time we’ll look back and realise we had it wrong about digital. Digital transformation was never about digital, and rarely about transformation. It’s actually about the processes by which you change your business model or approach. Some of… Continue reading
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Do You Default To Simplicity – Or Complexity?
Although it doesn’t show up explicitly in any personality test, some people seem to be more prone to creating complexity than others. Instead of cutting to the heart of an issue, they tangle it further; rather than narrowing down projects,… Continue reading
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Thinking Differently Is Slowing Transformation
Despite the perpetual cheerleading for innovation, most of our organisations need to be boringly effective. This week we’ve been mapping our work across 30 service objectives at Bromford – and it strikes me that most of what we do doesn’t need… Continue reading
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Making Sense of Social Media and Learning
In 2017 not using social media as a leader is akin to sitting in a closed office with the door shut and the phone on divert – all day everyday. However – there’s often a gap between social media and… Continue reading
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Do Industry Awards Inspire or Inhibit Innovation?
This week Bromford was announced the winner of the ‘Outstanding innovation of the year’ recognising our approach to testing and developing new services. Philippa Jones, our chief executive, said: “This is fantastic recognition for so many colleagues and customers who have… Continue reading
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How Much Good Does Your Organisation Really Achieve?
We don’t usually think of achievements in terms of what would have happened otherwise, but we should. What matters is not who does good but whether good is done.” ― William MacAskill, Doing Good Better We all love an uplifting… Continue reading
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Do We Believe In Our Own Customers?
Yesterday I checked myself in for a Digital Detox. I left less than 90 minutes later. I’m in Sri Lanka – and my usually reliable travel research had failed me. The resort we arrived at was truly beautiful but the… Continue reading
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How Do We Know Our Organisations Are Really Succeeding?
Every day, organisations promise to make the world a better place. How do we know they are really succeeding? The National Health Service we are told is the world’s best healthcare system. Yet the NHS has a poor record on one fairly… Continue reading
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Three Simple Ideas To Stop Change Failing
“The essence of transformation isn’t incremental. Transformation means ‘radical change’. And few companies truly countenance that because it’s, well…too radical.” – Anne McCrossan Maybe we are being too ambitious. Perhaps the hype of business change is becoming all consuming, leading us… Continue reading
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How To Become A Disobedient Organisation
Imagine being given $250,000 for deliberately breaking the rules. No strings attached. That’s exactly what MIT are doing. Recognising that societies and institutions lean toward order and away from chaos they have launched an award and cash prize that will go… Continue reading
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Digital Transformation is Failing. Why?
“A key reason why true mobile working isn’t being implemented is because of management culture. The case for mobile working has been proven; it is the people who are the biggest barriers.”- 2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends report The way… Continue reading
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How Not To Involve Customers
In 1985 one of the biggest brands in the world nearly destroyed itself – by listening to what customers said. Coca-Cola developed a product dubbed “New Coke” that was slightly sweeter than the original. Almost 200,000 blind taste tests were… Continue reading
