The management merry-go-round: An employee perspective on restructuring
I was talking once to a railway worker who described his life in one of the UK’s railway franchises: Every so often a new franchise owner would bring in a new set of excited managers to play with the railway set, but the railway set itself never fundamentally changed. This guy had been doing the same job for forty years since the days of British Rail, and the rotation of management every few years was just a part of life. A second example:... [Read More...]
The volume-value heuristic, or Why do change programmes produce so many pieces of paper?
“Volume=value” is hard-coded into our DNA, because at an animal level volume=survival. Somewhere deep inside us all is a squirrel for whom a bigger nut hoard is a few days’ less hunger. You can feel this instinct every time you “Buy one get one free” when you don’t need one let alone two. I think this might go some way to explaining why change progammes generate so much paper. I was working on a project recently... [Read More...]
A theme we often hear in engagement sessions with employees is that middle management are more concerned with productivity than quality. The situation is invariably stated as an either/or – “they” care about productivity, “we” care about quality. Digging deeper there is invariably misinformation on both sides, but what interests me most in this sketch is how obsession with numbers can drive people away from face-to-face... [Read More...]
Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord’s four box model
Unless you’re a military historian, you probably haven’t heard of General Kurt Von Hammerstein-Equord. He rose to become commander-in-chief of the German army between the wars, and is remembered for being a staunch opponent of the Nazi regime. That is, unless you’ve read widely in organisational behaviour, in which case you probably only know him for the following, slightly un-PC remark: I divide my officers into four classes;... [Read More...]
All the unsaid things between us …
This was inspired by a comment from a client recently about the meeting culture they were experiencing at work. They were frustrated: When this sort of pattern persists it can cause significant personal and financial costs. Tweet This Post Read More →
Programme communications: The loose cannon
Every change/comms manager we’ve shown this picture to seems to roll over laughing … it’s obviously hit a bit of a nerve! We are currently in the process of creating a new pre-packaged Visual Dialogue “session-in-a-box” to help programme teams discuss and resolve common issues. This picture is one of several we’ve created to help get people talking. They draw on our own experiences of difficult situations... [Read More...]
Employee engagement: Getting on board the runaway train
This is a vote of sympathy for all of the beleaguered change managers out there working with unsympathetic programme managers! Tweet This Post Read More →
Voicing – what’s not spoken about in your organisation?
This picture was originally one of a series we have produced to visualise the key themes from Bill Isaacs’ Dialogue model, one of several dialogue models we’ve played with over the years. This picture speaks to the theme of “Voicing”. Here’s Isaacs’ description: To speak to your voice is perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of genuine dialogue. Speaking your voice has to do with revealing what is true... [Read More...]
The Change Curve
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What is engagement?
Engagement is Connection … The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has just published a new report by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke on employee engagement. We wholeheartedly recommend this report – it makes some great points and is filled with useful case studies. It’s very hard to get to the end and still avoid the conclusion that having an engaged workforce really does improve bottom line results. But what actually is engagement? ... [Read More...]
The time cost of poor communication
What I learned about communication from commuting into London every day … Two things I hate: Train delays and boring Powerpoint presentations. They both waste time, and not in an unrelated way, as I want to show. The metaphor of time as a scarce resource is a well integrated part of the Western worldview – we don’t just talk about how we waste time, but how we save time, spend time, how time runs out, how some time can be set aside, how... [Read More...]
Can anyone draw?
Can visual thinking be learned? I’m always being told how lucky I am to “be able to draw”. Everyone seems to assume that any artistic ability – musical, visual, poetic or whatever – is an innate skill and that you either have it or you don’t. Harder edged skills – reading, writing, arithmetic – on the other hand, are basic abilities that everyone should be able to develop. Now in my work I get the opportunity to blur the... [Read More...]
Behaviour and theory
Economists and Sir Fred Goodwin … For some reason, the saga unfolding around Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension revelations last week made a connection in my brain with distant memories of economics lectures. The lecture in question was on the “behavioural theory of the firm”, taken from a book of the same name by Richard Cyert and James March. Before this book was written in the sixties, the main theory of the firm in economics circles was... [Read More...]
The meaning of meaning
What does a meaningful workplace actually look like? In my review of Gurnek Bains’ Meaning Inc my main criticism was that it barely said anything about representation, without which there can be no meaning. Unfortunately there wasn’t any space to develop the idea further, and as it probably sounds a bit arcane on first reading I want to spend some time filling in a few blanks. Back in the nineteenth century most scientists believed there was... [Read More...]
Meaning Inc. Book Review
Meaning Inc: What does it all mean? Meaning Inc came out about a year ago now, and is basically a manifesto from business psychology consultancy YSC. Although its stated author is YSC’s CEO Gurnek Bains, judging from the Acknowledgements it was very much a collaborative effort. The models and case studies (not to mention cover recommendations) are evidently drawn from client history. This isn’t problematic, although the content does sometimes... [Read More...]
