Paul Taylor
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Agile Isn’t Everything and Everything Isn’t Agile
A friend of mine was recently invited on a two-day training course to teach/indoctrinate them in the ways of agile. It was accompanied by a 500-slide PowerPoint, no doubt explaining terms like ‘scrum of scrums’, ‘time boxing’, ‘epics’, ‘niko niko… Continue reading
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Disruption-Proof: How Entire Sectors Avoid Transformation
There used to be a question posed when Amazon first began eating into entire sectors – such as cloud computing, groceries, streaming video, and healthcare. Where won’t Amazon go? Is any sector Amazon-proof? Today’s question is where won’t disruption go?… Continue reading
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Community Is The Only Unit of Sustainable Change
The basic unit of sustained innovation is not a creative individual, nor even a team, but a creative community with a cause. Charles Leadbetter I’m just off the back of a first round of workshops, or rather conversations, about the… Continue reading
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How Do You Change A System That Doesn’t Want To Change?
There were two recurring P words throughout the New Local ‘Stronger Things’ event in London’s Guildhall. Permission: give it. Power: share it. The Guildhall was built in the 15th century to demonstrate the continuing power of the merchants of the… Continue reading
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Technology Is Not Innovation.
For all the talk of technology, let’s remember we are human businesses and we exist to help other humans do better in life. It’s our only real purpose. So let’s think how we can use technology to leverage the huge… Continue reading
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Work Is Mostly Mundane. And That’s Not A Bad Thing
Just like the modern world implores that we should be happy all the time (we aren’t and we are not meant to be), the modern workplace wants everyone to be engaged, energised and innovative when they simply don’t need to… Continue reading
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Do You Really Need An Innovation Strategy?
Do you really need an innovation strategy? I say no. You need a strategy that sets out a challenge and invites everyone to ask questions and go on a journey of discovery. A strategy that is founded on principles of… Continue reading
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Is The 15-Minute City A Bad Idea?
How do relatively straightforward ideas become so controversial? The 15-minute city (FMC or 15mC) is an urban planning concept that aims to make cities or towns more liveable by ensuring that all essential services — think schools, medical care and shops — are within the distance of… Continue reading
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The Case For An Organisational ‘Day Of Silence’
On Wednesday 22nd March I was back in lockdown, confined to a hotel room for 24 hours. Don’t feel sorry for me though, I was in Bali, Indonesia. On Nyepi day , which is New Year’s day in the Balinese… Continue reading
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Big Consultancy and The Rise of The Non-Expert ‘Experts’
No one ever got fired for hiring McKinsey, or so the saying goes. The total size of the global transformation market is expected to grow from $445.4bn in 2017 to $2,279.4bn by 2025. The consulting component of a transformation programme… Continue reading
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Innovation Doesn’t Happen By Accident
Trickle down innovation, just like trickle down economics, doesn’t trickle down very far at all. When leaders are implored to innovate they often go for the easiest and most attractive option, innovation theatre: You bring someone in to give an… Continue reading
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The Creativity Productivity Paradox
You can’t endorse a top-down authority structure and be serious about enhancing adaptability, innovation, or engagement. Gary Hamel Employers are facing a conundrum: a generational gap in job satisfaction. Research seems to indicate that while Gen Z and millennial workers… Continue reading
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Analysis Paralysis and The Threat To Innovation
A much delayed first post of 2023, which has been for a couple of reasons. Firstly I’ve taken a super relaxing break and switched off completely rather than my usual rambling around. I’ve been staying in one of those Caribbean… Continue reading
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Designing For Ambiguity
When you introduce ambiguity, rather than control, into a system, people think for themselves and find a way to reach the right answer. Mark McArthur Christie The only traffic sign in the small northern Dutch village of Makkinga says ‘Verkeersbordvrij’ which translates… Continue reading
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Why Big Teams Keep Getting Bigger
Large teams, like large movie studios, are more likely to generate sequels than produce anything new Continue reading
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What To Do When You’ve Become A Legacy Organisation
The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind Jeff Bezos Highlight of my week… Continue reading
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Turning Constraints Into Innovation Opportunities
As we enter a further period of economic uncertainty we will undoubtedly see a slash and burn approach to cost reduction in many of our organisation’s. An impending crisis often triggers suboptimal decision making that tends to focus on survival… Continue reading
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The Unintended Consequence of Putting People in Boxes
The world’s population will reach 8 billion sometime in November 2022, and each one of those people has a different personality, different background and different set of values – making us all unique. You wouldn’t know it though if you… Continue reading
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Understanding The System Beats Recruiting People Every Time
How much better off would we ALL be, if all the resources poured pointlessly into chasing talent were instead poured into understanding systems, and systems thinking? The Quintessential Group This week I got the opportunity to speak at the prestigious… Continue reading
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Few People Get Promoted For Asking Difficult Questions
Research indicates that even when everyone within a group recognizes who the subject matter expert is, they defer to that member just 62% of the time; when they don’t, they listen to the most extroverted person Khalil Smith Innovation must be founded… Continue reading
Paul Taylor 