Tag: Chris Bolton
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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 Archbishop’s Palace, a place steeped in history and first mentioned in the Domesday Book nearly […]
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The Growing Immunity To ‘Change Management Bullshit’
In an era of competing and conflicting crises few things are certain. One thing we can count on though is our organisational ability to cope with change is going to be stretched to breaking point. This is concerning as our track record in delivering change in a more stable past has often been less than […]
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When Leaders Talk About Innovation, Always Be Sceptical
Declare yourself an innovation company and celebrate creativity, by all means. Then treat your employees to a little seminar in business history that emphasizes real-life time frames and the numbing necessity of trial and error, trial and error, trial and error. Sir Harold Evans In turbulent times beware the leader touting innovation myths. Myths like: […]
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How To Kill Ideas (Part 53)
Many organisations 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 – ‘the way we do things around here’ – that can quell any creativity or dissent. Organisations can quickly develop an autonomic immune response […]
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Why The Employee Idea Scheme Doesn’t Work
The concept of asking employees to share their ideas to drive innovation is always a good one. Unfortunately, the traditional suggestion scheme is, in my opinion, not the way to go about it.
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Why Do We Believe In Silver Bullet Solutions?
In folklore, a bullet cast from silver is often one of the few weapons that are effective against a werewolf or witch. In business, the “silver bullet” is a simple, but sure-fire solution to a complex and/or chronic problem. Once you use it, the problem goes away completely. Why do we believe in silver bullets?
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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.
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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
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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
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The Way We Work Isn’t Working
The office, after management, is arguably the biggest inefficiency tax that organisations layer over themselves. They cost huge amounts to procure and maintain, they become an all too convenient base for meetings (another inefficiency tax), and they set a precedent for the expected hours that people are meant to work. Offices promote lengthy commuting which […]
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People Aren’t Sick Of Change. They’re Just Sick Of Change Programmes
I don’t buy into the idea that humans intrinsically hate change. I just think that by the time we’re in our 30s or 40s, lots of our experience of change – particularly in the workplace – has been more negative than positive. Instinctively rejecting it is a learned response – Tom Cheesewright People , we […]
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Enabling A New World Of Public Service Delivery
The UK now finds itself in its lowest-ever position in the Global Trust Index, just one place off the bottom, with only Russia below it – Ed Williams President and CEO, EMEA The results are in: Nobody trusts anyone anymore. The 2020 update of the Edelman Trust Barometer, which aims to survey trust and credibility […]
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How To Keep Focussed (And Remain Sane) In A World Of Complex Problems
In our heart, we know the solution does not lie in reforming silo by silo but in organizing our silos the way people organize their lives, so that the neighbourhood becomes our primary unit of analysis and change – Cormac Russell I’ve spent two days this week with both the Connected Places Catapult in London […]
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How To Kill Doomed Projects
The challenge for managers in the “can-do” culture of business is to distinguish between belief as a key driver of success—and belief as something that can blind managers to a project’s ultimate failure – Isabelle Royer It’s always easier to start something new than it is to stop doing something. Many of our organisations are […]
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If We Don’t Develop Different Relationships, We’ll Lose Our Legitimacy
If we do not respond to people and communities’ desire for power, we will lose our legitimacy and waste the potential of the many ways they can have agency over what matters to them. If we do not continually, bravely work to build trust, we will lose the essential foundation for everything we do. – Civil […]
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What Digital Transformation Is Not About
#WAODigital18 I’m hearing a lot about testing multiple small things and spreading what works – rather than investing in single Big Bang solutions. The world is moving too fast… — Chris Bolton (@whatsthepont) June 14, 2018 “How ambitious can organisations be in using digital technology?” was the theme of two recent events I contributed to […]
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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 […]
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Failure: We Need To Move From Slow And Stupid To Fast And Intelligent
In the history of pointless technology, it takes a lot to beat the Twitter Peek. Aimed at those interested in Twitter, but who didn’t own a smartphone, it asked customers to spend $100 plus a monthly subscription. With the benefit of hindsight, it was clearly designed to solve a problem that didn’t really exist. If you were […]
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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 York housewife named Jean Nidetch began a weekly meeting with friends at her home to […]
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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 like – and that most people have a bad experience of them. My contention is […]
Paul Taylor 