Paul Taylor

  • Who Really Wins From Digital Transformation?

    The birth of the change management movement began in the 1960s and 70s – when big consultancy began to see a vast new market – convincing organisations of the benefits of ‘transformation’. Alongside this came the development of a distinctive, pseudo-scientific language of change which the consultants needed to pitch themselves to new clients. It…

    Paul Taylor

  • If We Want Different Relationships, The Doing Must Be New And Different Too

    You can’t change a relationship without actually changing your behaviour. 

    Paul Taylor

  • Is It Time To Get Rid Of The Job Title?

    Deleted my Tesla titles last week to see what would happen. I’m now the Nothing of Tesla. Seems fine so far. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2018 Last week Elon Musk dropped all job titles associated with Tesla referring to himself as CEO of nothing. Although he soon discovered that some jobs are legally required…

    Paul Taylor

  • Nine Ways To Unlock Creativity In Your Organisation

    Some organisations are obsessive about finding the silver bullet—the one-shot wonder that solves everything. In an effort to strengthen performance, we’ll often make disproportionate investments in a single initiative to invoke change. Others are fixed on generating ideas – jumping towards uncontrolled creativity as the solution. However most of our organisations don’t suffer from a…

    Paul Taylor

  • Does Benchmarking Really Save Companies From Failure?

    Even in the very best organisations, bad practice is waiting just around the corner. In 2014 General Motors began the recall of the Chevrolet Cobalt which would ultimately affect nearly 30 million cars worldwide. The problem was with the ignition switch which could shut off the car while it was being driven, disabling power steering, power…

    Paul Taylor

  • Why Small Teams Win

    In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos came up with a rule: every team should be small enough that it could be fed with two pizzas. The ‘Two Pizza Rule’ signalled that Bezos didn’t want more talking, more line reports and more communication. He wanted a decentralised, even disorganised company where creativity and independence prevailed…

    Paul Taylor

  • We Need To Be Boringly Reliable and Radically Disruptive – At The Same Time

    Our organisations are generally bad at innovation. That’s because they are designed that way. Just as your body is designed to fight a common cold, most of our cultures protect the organisational DNA from any foreign antibodies. Add something new and it can get rejected. It’s not personal. It’s just an automatic survival mechanism. Purposeful thinking –…

    Paul Taylor

  • Reshaping Organisations Around What’s Strong – Not What’s Wrong

    “ECONOMICS ARE THE METHOD: THE OBJECT IS TO CHANGE THE SOUL” This (pretty chilling) quote comes from Margaret Thatcher in 1981 – and ushered in an era that promoted the belief that social progress is achieved through the accumulation of wealth or status. Earn more, consume more, and you’ll be happy.  The legacy of this is…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 York housewife named Jean Nidetch began a weekly meeting with friends at her home to…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 , The Shallows You’d have thought we’d have given up on the physical office by now.…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 attention to spreadsheets, specifications, PowerPoint presentations and status reports, failing to realise these are the…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 will be; A very great bore to stay till four. – A Day At The…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 your eyes. A recent report says we are trapped in a reactive spending cycle on public…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 off a range of subjects but the conversation kept coming back to that opening quote…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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. It has resulted in the issuing of corporate annual reports, press releases , customer satisfaction scores…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 been at the very forefront of helping us test and shape our new approach –…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 to a person or group engaged in an extraordinary example of disobedience for the benefit of…

    Paul Taylor

  • 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 conducted and most participants said that they favoured New Coke over both the original formula…

    Paul Taylor

  • Know Your Customers, Just Never Ask Them What They Want

    We do not really know what our potential users will really respond to, what they will understand or what they’ll hate until we really see them using it –Jonathan Courtney If you are working on any new service change or product there’s one question I guarantee will be asked of you at some point: “What…

    Paul Taylor

  • How Automation Helps Us Solve The Problems That Matter

    “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” – Elbert Hubbard Automation gets a bad rap. The original draft of our design principles stated “Automate everything that can be automated”. People flinched – it was seen as too harsh. Mention automation and people make a mental…

    Paul Taylor

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