One of Terry Pratchett’s characters has a wonderful line,something like: ’walk a mile in your enemy’s shoes. That way,you’re a mile away and they have no shoes’! Maybe its just me, but I often find myself on the phone to the bank,or dealing with a utility company, or getting to grips with some new gadget [...] Read more – ‘The number one way to more successful communication’.
Many of us don’t like like looking at organisational and project culture because we believe it’s hard to understand, not clear why it’s important, and, well, touchy-feely. Actually it’s the other way round: it’s pretty easy to spot and start to understand if you just look at the reality of the organisation around you: who [...] Read more – ‘What’s culture got to do with projects? There’s a question with a hard answer’.
You’ve probably heard the advice that the first step in solving a problem is to define it clearly. But therein lies a risk: the way you define a problem may limit where you look for a solution. A classic example of this comes from architecture: ask someone to design a door and that’s what you’ll [...] Read more – ‘Time to Resist ‘Resistance to Change’?’.
I admit it: I am a bit – ok, very – obsessive about keeping my diary and todo list up to date (and checking them every few hours). And I do try to plan how best to use the following month, week, and next day. I love the pomodoro technique for actually getting stuff done. [...] Read more – ‘In defence of time management … and checklists!’.
A wonderful American friend recently enquired after my recent ‘un-wellness’: an unusual and I think very positive way of putting it, that places the emphasis on ‘wellness’ as being the normal state. His words reminded me of the importance of language -in particular how it influences and limits how we think about problems, and affects [...] Read more – ‘Our words reveal and program how we think and work together’.
A while back I was sitting on a train and noticed the guy sitting opposite, eating ice cream, behaving in a most extraordinary way towards his young son. He would take a lick of the ice cream, hold it out to his son to take a look, and then snatch it away from him. I [...] Read more – ‘You can’t NOT influence other people’.
Visiting a leading Public Relations firm the other day, one that has a powerful self-image and brand as people and business focussed, and of course “creative”, I was taken aback to see about a hundred people working in one big room, in rows in front of computers. It looked like a scene from a workhouse, [...] Read more – ‘Er … When did we forget that IT is only a tool to help with the real work?’.
This article is about how to develop effective international teams. Rather than telling ‘war stories’ about cultural differences and drawing superficial generalisations, the article focuses on practical management issues that need to be considered when assembling and controlling the team, including organisational matters, values, standards and norms, team selection, and training. Read more – ‘Developing International Teams’.
August seems an apt time to introduce one of the most useful wild cards in the ‘Getting Change Projects Done’ toolkit. Some years ago I was involved in a major project that had serious complications, and I was amazed when the director in charge suddenly took the afternoon off and went to the cinema. But, [...] Read more – ‘Why don’t you give yourself a break?’.
Despite ever more sophisticated Project and Change Management techniques around 80% of projects still fail – they don’t meet immediate cost, time and quality targets, don’t deliver longer-term benefits or changes just don’t stick. Generative Project Management pulls together experience of what does work, based on the simple premise that the way you go about [...] Read more – ‘Generative Project Management’.
In recent years we’ve seen important changes in the relationship between clients and consultants. From traditional “write a report” style consulting, interventions are now likely to be all-embracing in terms of issues and participation, dealing with both personal and business issues, integrating a range of approaches, and flexible rather than rigid. Read more – ‘Creating Space for Organizational Change’.
We often hear the expression “thinking outside the box”, as in “what we need is some out of the box thinking”. Of course, recognising that there is a box could be the first step to getting outside it! But what is the box anyway? In business, such somewhat philosophical questions tend to get short shrift [...] Read more – ‘Thinking Outside The Box’.
