Category: culture
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The Learning Organisation
In all my work whether it’s about organisational agility, leadership, marketing or transformation, I am increasingly of the opinion that the critical capability of the modern organisation is the ability to learn fast. And I don’t mean training or new skills (though this too is not unimportant). I mean to learn about the optimal way…
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How workshop culture supports high performing teams
I facilitate a lot of workshops as part of what I do and so I was really looking forward to speaking with facilitator extraordinaire Alison Coward who works with a wide range of teams to help them work better and achieve their goals. Alison’s just written a new book (out this week) called ‘Workshop Culture:…
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Context Switching
I wrote about the downsides of constant context switching (or the tendency we have to move from one task to another unrelated one) in my last book but it’s a subject that I keep thinking about when I talk to anyone about their working environment and the challenge of creating space or dedicating blocks to…
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The Freedom to Create
Recently I've been dipping into the wonderful 'Every Frame a Painting' (sidebar: what a great name) series of video essays which looks at the art and craft of filmmaking. I watched this one the other day, focusing on how many modern films play safe with their music scores, and consequently how forgettable many of them…
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Google Firestarters Episode 15: Ian Fitzpatrick
A fascinating episode of Google Firestarters with Ian Fitzpatrick, Global Director Brand Strategy and Operations at New Balance
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Learning Opportunities
There were several well articulated points in this post by Lean specialist John Shook about why it's so important for leaders not to try and solve all the problems on behalf of their teams. An outdated style of leadership believes that all the answers exist at the top of the organisation and flow down. Yet…
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Acronyms Really Do Suck
This 2010 memo from Elon Musk, written to the SpaceX team on the theme of tackling the burgeoning use of acronyms in the business, speaks to a long-time bugbear of mine. There was, he said at the time, a creeping tendency… 'Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping…
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Constraints, Creativity and the Koln Concert
Lovely story in this new TED talk by (Firestarters speaker) Tim Harford focusing on how constraints contribute to creativity, and concerning Keith Jarrett's 1975 performance at the opera house in Cologne – one of the most famous piano recordings of all time. Worth listening to Tim tell the story in his usual compelling way, but here's…
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High and Low Context Cultures
When I was at Aerials last week there was a question from the audience (from Boris actually) to the panel referencing the idea of high and low context cultures, derived originally from Edward Halls's book Beyond Culture. We were discussing organisational culture and change, and Boris's question related to the differences that might need to…
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Why it’s Time to Ditch the Annual Performance Review
News came at the end of last month that Accenture were killing off performance reviews and rankings for their employees. They're not the first (Deloitte, Microsoft and Adobe have apparently done so too) but this was notable in being one of the largest companies by headcount (330,000) to do so. Good riddance I say. Performance…