Paul Taylor
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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… Continue reading
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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? Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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What Face Masks Teach Us About Behaviour Change
Ultimately the innovation and change process begins and ends with one basic premise – listen first Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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The Regressive Power of Labelling People As Vulnerable
The paradox of employing the term of ‘vulnerability’ is that it makes people more vulnerable. Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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Indifference Towards Truth: Rebuilding Trust In a Post Lockdown World
If ever there was a time for critical thinking to make a comeback it’s right about now. This post was written in week eight of the UK lockdown , 55 days in which we’ve generated more speculation, more opinion and… Continue reading
Paul Taylor 