Business Leadership
Often when I am giving workshops or keynotes around creativity, especially in a corporate setting, I will ask the participants to anonymously vote on whether they are creative or not. You would be surprised how many people believe that they are not creative. And a series of surveys by Adobe in 2012 and 2016 show [...]
What are you hoping to achieve next year? No, I am not talking about what you and your company's high level goals are: ... Increase market share ... ... Improve profit margins ... ... Be innovative ... I am asking what specific ambitions you and your company have for next year. Especially when it comes [...]
Where in your business or your team are you willing to bend the rules? Would you be willing to tolerate a sale where the margins were below your team's KPIs, just in order to get the revenue from the sale? And would you punish a different team member if they wanted to use those same [...]
With today's always-on workforce, we get tasks thrown at us constantly. And now that people can access work emails and instant messages on their Smartphones, lines can get blurred as to when these tasks are expected to be received, and completed. Especially if we want to portray ourselves as hard workers and build a reputation [...]
Have you ever been in a situation where you think nobody likes the decision which everyone agreed to? This might be explained by the Abelines Paradox. Coined by management expert Jerry B. Harvey in his 1974 article "The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement", it describes a fictional case study of a family going on [...]
What is the most important thing when it comes to business? You would think it is marketing, business strategy, revenue, branding, human capital, and profit - and you’re wrong! While all of these are critical aspects of any successful business, love is first. Yes, it is love. You can love your employees and those you [...]
Have you ever heard of someone trying to "game the system"? This refers to the process whereby it is clear what the targets for success are, and an individual, group or company does just enough to qualify for meeting those specific criteria. Even if it means that more important overall success criteria suffer as a [...]
Most companies think they have a clear strategy. However, what they think is a strategy is usually nothing more than a set of goals. A real strategy requires clarity on not only what you want to achieve, but how you will choose to focus on achieving this, as well as what you choose not to [...]
I believe that Psychological Safety is one of the most important capabilities a team can have to achieve high innovation performance. Check out the amazing podcast episode with the originator of the concept, Prof Amy Edmondson. To describe it simply: Psychological Safety is a climate where people believe it is possible, expected and valued, that [...]
Sometimes, innovation can have unintended, negative consequences. Even if what you aimed to improve was a total success by the criteria you measured. This is the danger of judging success only by a narrow set of specific criteria, and ignoring other changes which you did not anticipate. Let me give you an example. A few [...]
