Organisations are not naturally fertile seedbeds for new learning, growth and doing things in better ways. Leaders who want to instil wide-spread change and improve their respective companies, in fact, need to recognise that they are attempting to change a seemingly unchangeable paradox: organisations thrive on routine and the status quo. Daniel Goleman, in his…
There are plenty out there that are bad, really bad – so-called “consultants” that wear the right suits, say the right things, claim experience beyond their years, but who ultimately give the profession a bad name. They parade their “skills” and expertise in front of the client with no real proven substance or testimony to…
I recall very clearly a team’s behaviour in a large manufacturing company, the team largely been made up of engineers and operational/production experts – whenever an idea was introduced to the larger gathering, individuals would attempt to pick holes in the idea unless the introducer of the idea was able to defend the principle and…
Dr Stephen R Covey of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fame, at an address that I attended in the USA, related a story regarding exceptional client service in a hotel at which he was a guest. He had, through his secretary, made a reservation at the hotel chain that he usually used whilst travelling…
I have been doing some consulting work with a multi-national company recently, a company that has over two hundred brewing and bottling facilities all over the world. The company is well established, its oldest plants being almost two hundred years old. I imagine success partly can be attributed to the quality and desirability of its…
As organisations grow, they get fat. As they get fat, the ability to be flexible, grab new possibilities and make subtle shifts in focus or direction is impeded. The impediment causes frustration and results in everyone “working harder” in activities that are possibly not relevant to the prevailing market needs. The irrelevance in the market…
Solving the world’s poverty dilemma is surely too big a topic to handle in a short article. A key emerging facet of the solution, however, is the steady increase in entrepreneurship worldwide. Small and large projects, when managed well through skilful leadership, develop profit, offer job opportunities for many and uplift the communities in which…
In the early 1980’s, plans were well underway within the Boeing “family” to build the Boeing 777. When they began to consider building the largest and most complex plane ever designed, Boeing developed a new set of values, which led to a specific set of long-range goals. The same were cascaded into a large set…
One of my worst recollections of corporate life was the amount of meetings I had to attend – not because they were not necessary or unimportant, but because they were either not focused and boring, or because a few people dominated what was supposed to be a discussion and deliberation. Non-participation in processes (including meetings)…
The Year 2000 Problem (or Y2K) was a crisis for both digital (computer-related) and non-digital documentation and data storage situations which resulted from the practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits. This practice became problematic with logical errors possibly arising upon roll-over from x99 to x00, causing date-related processes to operate incorrectly for…
In the Arthurian legends, Sir Perceval, one of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, was raised by a mother who taught him the importance of asking questions. The instruction was proved invaluable during his youth when he escaped from a group of knights by asking questions rather than giving answers. By the time he…
The A-Team was an American action-adventure television series, running from 1983 to 1987, about a fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces personnel who work as “soldiers of fortune”, while on the run from the Army after being branded as war criminals for a “crime they didn’t commit”. The A-Team was portrayed as acting…
