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It’s not a behavioural problem: it’s the system
Don’t ask a systems thinker for advice on managing performance or staff engagement. They will probably say something pretty fruity and you’ll wind up frustrated by how fervently they trash...
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The Power of We
Interesting what can spark an idea and create insight. Staring at the full moon the other night, I found myself marvelling, yet again, that we’ve been there. That led me to consider the...
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Leadership is an inside job
So the world didn’t end on December 21, surprise, surprise. Here we are in 2013, all systems still intact. I have heard some speak of the Mayan December 21 end-of-all-things-prediction not so much an...
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How do we get to WE?
There is something in the air. Call it my natural human tendency to find patterns in things, but two recent conversations with two different clients in two different cities have reminded me of two...
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A Matter of Life and Death
from “The Ruins of Detroit” by Marchand and Meffre Why would the whole of the Universe be a complex, self-organising and interdependent system, and a business be a top-down, controlled machine? Why...
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I am the Walrus
Know how you have an experience and some song lyrics pop into your head that seem to have been written especially for it? ”Expert textpert, choking smoker, don’t you think the joker laughs at you?”...
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Do we really need performance management?
Individual performance management is rubbish. Not only that, it’s patronising and disabling. I’ve said it before. When people aren’t performing, it’s extremely probable that it’s not a behavioural...
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Manage the system, not silos
I’ve heard that if you cut a hologram into pieces, each piece contains all the information of the whole. I’ve never tried it, but I like the idea that each part is a microcosm of the whole thing. In...
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Eliminate targets
“Systems thinkers know a number of counter-intuitive truths.” John Seddon One of these counter-intuitive truths is that “when you manage costs, your costs go up. When you learn to manage value, your...
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How can we create new patterns of inter-relating at work?
I have been interested in the furore that has followed Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer banning workers from working from home. I’ve also read that Hubert Joly, the new chief at struggling retailer Best Buy...
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Counter-acting the Stockholm Syndrome
Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages display empathy and sympathy for their captors, often developing positive feelings towards them and defending them. I’m often...
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What does it take for us to work as a team?
Copernicus has been name-checked in a fair few articles I’ve read lately. Good thing too. Working with a client a couple years ago, we illustrated the concept of “shifting consciousness” with a...
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A “working out loud” credo
photo by John Wenger I love the “working out loud” approach. It’s highly social, which now, after years of personal work, runs through me like a stick of rock. In that (ongoing) personal journey, I...
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What is sociometry?
Carl Sagan has said, “There is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” He goes on to say that we have “a responsibility to deal more kindly with each other.” Where can...
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Where is the love?
In “On the Waterfront”, Eve Marie Saint’s character, Edie, is on a date with Marlon Brandon’s character Terry, and as they sit and talk and get to know a little about each other, she enquires about...
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Seven principles to strengthen relationships at work
photo by John Wenger, 2014. That’s some good clickbait, huh? A friend observed “subtle undertones of humour” in my last post, so I thought I’d continue in that vein with a shameless clickbait title....
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The insight illusion
Paris street art. Photo by John Wenger, 2014. Confucius is quoted as saying, “When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as...
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…and empathy too!
This is a response to a post by Julie Drybrough, so it might be useful to check out her post before reading on. What I liked about her post and most of her posts is that it enlivened me and gave me an...
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What the world needs now…
…is love sweet love. As Burt Bacharach and Hal David said, that’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. I shall resist reminding you of the many horrible and ugly things happening in the...
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