Organisational charts and organisational reality
There’s something reassuring about org charts – they can easily disguise what is really going on, making everything feel neat and manageable. It’s interesting how often the title of these charts is the name of the company, as if the piece of paper actually is the company itself. Tweet This Post Read More →
Elephant Under The Table
When people become fearful of saying what really concerns them, leaders lose sight of what’s really happening in their organization and the quality of their decision-making suffers. For employees, unarticulated frustration can turn into confusion and anger that quickly creates a culture of low morale. This then manifests as apathy, resistance or even sabotage. Soon, no one wants to talk about the real issues even though they are staring everyone... [Read More...]
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...]
Business stress: what’s not being talked about in your organisation?
How unspoken issues and feelings can be the biggest barrier to change and increase the stress in a business I was working with a client last week at an away-day workshop, one session was about exploring the obstacles to change. Before we’d got very far, it became apparent to me that the biggest obstacles still weren’t being talked about. Having had some experience over the years of drawing out unspoken issues to help people talk about... [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...]
