coaching
Helping you or your staff through the tough times.
Frequently a project with a company develops into a long term relationship: sometimes formally as a non-executive director, sometimes less formally mentoring and coaching key members of staff.
We can help by asking awkward questions, making connections, or just listening.
However we help, we want to be there in the long term helping you, in the words of one of our clients; "patiently, enthusiastically, effectively and with great humour ".
Book review of Atul Gawande’s ‘The Checklist Manifesto’
There are lots of types of books, aren’t there? In our household there are dog-eared reference books that we reach for several times a day; there are large format picture books that are treated with reverence and care; there are really rubbish books that belong in, and often end up in, the rubbish (trash), and for me, there are “cold-cuppa” books.
I read a lot, but I don’t read quickly. So reading is a significant and important investment for me, which is why, when a book irritates me, it often ends up being literally thrown out. (I’m not alone in this, Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat once admitted to me that she’d thrown a book she disliked across her hotel bedroom.) But sometimes, just sometimes, I come across a “cold-cuppa” book.
(more…)
What has Korean Air flight 801 got to do with creativity and innovation in your company?
At 1:42am on 6th August 1997, Korean Air flight 801 crashed into Nimitz Hill, 5km short of Guam airport, skidded for 600 metres, destroying an oil pipeline before falling into a ravine and bursting into flames killing 228 of the 254 people on board[i]. Your company could be heading in exactly the same way, for exactly the same reason.
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks to some of the experts who have studied this crash and its causes. There were a series of faults and errors leading up to the crash, making it more likely that it could happen, but none of them actually causing it. What it ultimately came down to was the inability of the cockpit crew to challenge the pilot (who was exhausted and clearly not thinking straight), and of the co-pilot to explain their situation to air traffic control. The crew’s inability to act was not due to poor ability, but the etiquette of the Korean culture. How can it be that someone could hold onto such etiquette in the face of imminent death?
(more…)
Why some businesses are scared of creativity and why they need to embrace it fully.
I love serendipity. First a friend sends me a fascinating piece he had written on creativity, and in particular in a commercial context; then I spot two articles appear simultaneously on the BBC News website; then I see one of our most creative thinkers, Malcolm Gladwell, speaking in Oxford, and he chooses to talk about … serendipity.
Creativity is incredibly important, without it we can have no innovation, not just the big innovations, but the myriad minor ones that people can make every day. To me, it is the lifeblood of new product development.
I’m also aware that some people find it scary. Creative conversations put them outside their comfort zone. They like the certainty of a known universe and find the exploratory concepts we use to build new ideas rather disturbing and pointless.
(more…)
Is your customer focus two faced?
By Chris | October 16, 2009
Just how solid are the bedrock subjects of Management Science?
All effectivus posts