Tag: organisation

May 212012

Top Tips to Transform Team Working…#3

Teams No Comments

What are the most important words in any team interaction?

IDK are the initials. “I don’t know”? That’s it!

Owning up to what isn’t known, what isn’t right, what has been done wrong gets the team working going on the right track. The spirit of vulnerability between team members builds the trust necessary for great group working.

So we have the first three of the idenk checklist of signs for great team work:

1.Continuously improve: Seize problems + curiosity = progress

2.Make time: to get the personal productivity habit… so you have time to think, for email, to meet 1:1, to meet as group, to do great work…

3.Be prepared to be a bit vulnerable: “I don’t know”; “sorry”; “I got that wrong”

Please email by return if you would like the other 7 in the list – or a bit more on these 3 (including some video clips from a 1 hour talk that brought ‘the 10’ to life with stories and examples).

Tags: organisation, working life

Posted in Teams | No Comments »

May 172012

Top Tips to Transform Team Working…#2

Teams No Comments

So if the first thing to invest in to transform your team is the desire to improve (seizing problems with a spirit of curiosity and determination), the second is pretty familiar to readers of these blogs:

2.Make time: to get the personal productivity habit… so you have time to think, for email, to meet 1:1, to meet as group, to do great work…

3.?…coming soon…

Tags: organisation, working life

Posted in Teams | No Comments »

May 102012

Top Tips to Transform Team Working…prelude

Front foot No Comments

Over the last few weeks I have given a number of presentations sharing our 10 signs of an effective team. I have presented these in a form of a checklist to guide professional practice. Surgeon, Atul Gawande, makes a powerful case for the impact of checklists to inform the reliable work of pilots, engineers and operating theatre staff. Checklists, he says, are useful in situations where there is low ignorance (ie people tend to know what they SHOULD do), but a high propensity for ineptitude (ie failing to apply what is known).

The next three idenk digests will list the first 3 items in our 10 point checklist for great team working. Before that, take time to think

1) What checklists do you, your team, your professional tribe or your organisation already use?

2) Where might checklists to codify and standardise be useful?

Tags: organisation, working life

Posted in Front foot | No Comments »

May 72012

Time managment tips

Personal productivity No Comments

A bit more on personal productivity: through the words and tips of a well-known range of people in The Guardian.

And a previous, popular, blog of ours too.

Tags: organisation, working life

Posted in Personal productivity | No Comments »

Mar 52012

Action learning

Reflect No Comments

The legacy of Reg Revans is one of the two key contributions to the theory and practice of developing organisations from the UK in the mid 20th century (the other being the tradition of group dynamics developed by the Tailstock Clinic).

Revans’s work was focused on learning from experience. Some of the ways he proposed this involved the creation of learning sets of about 6 or 7 people. The stage managed way of running a learning set meeting can be useful in many teams and boards.

What about this? Instead of just presenting papers, what about presenting a challenge you are facing or a problem, and then listen to your peers and colleagues explore it (considering hypotheses for its cause and options to move things one). These methods seek outcomes like those of coaching – deepening insight into a topic and broadening the range of options a person feels they might have in a particular situation.

Next time the agenda looks a bit dull, think of giving this a go…

Tags: meetings, organisation

Posted in Reflect | No Comments »

Sep 52011

A lesson in virtual working

Personal productivity No Comments

A large part of what we have done this year has been online working in virtual teams using WebEx and Skype.

We have enjoyed pushing those technologies to their limits as we design in interactivity with distant groups (more webshop, than webinar).

So this virtual choir blew our minds!

Tags: communication, organisation

Posted in Personal productivity | No Comments »

Mar 102011

Get onto the front foot: four things to try out with your team (#4 – Balance)

Do No Comments

Striking the right balance is the fourth thing to work on in getting and staying on the front foot.

The balance between:

– time working and time not working (no-one can stay on the front foot with an unrealistic workload)

– reviewing and thinking as well as planning and doing (it’s critical to break out of ‘firefighting’ mode).

The After Action Review process asks four useful questions for assessing progress against your 5-30-90 day plans:

– what was supposed to happen?
– what has actually happened?
– why was it different?
– what can we learn from this?

From this you can also think through what else it will take to keep on the front foot in getting your ideas into action.

So, there you go – four simple methods to bring our Front Foot framework to life.

Tags: balance, organisation, working life

Posted in Do | No Comments »

Mar 92011

Get onto the front foot: four things to try out with your team (#3 – Co-ordination)

Do No Comments

Co-ordinating everyone’s efforts is the third part of the Front Foot framework.

Here we find that 5-30-90 day planning clarifies the what, when and who. Spell out the critical actions for the next week, month and quarter.

It’s a sure-fire way to build on the momentum that is emerging.

Tags: co-ordination, organisation

Posted in Do | No Comments »

Mar 82011

Get onto the front foot: four things to try out with your team (#2 – Momentum)

Do No Comments

The second part of our Front Foot framework is about Momentum.

When we ask teams to consider how they can create momentum around what they are trying to achieve, we find the ABC method works well:

A is for accelerate – what can be sped up?

B is for brake – what needs to be stopped?

C is for create – what should be started?

This is a simple but very powerful technique – we have a poster template you can use for this.

Tomorrow? Co-ordination.

Tags: choices, knowledge, momentum, organisation

Posted in Do | No Comments »

Jan 102011

Getting them to sing takes time

Do No Comments

One of our Directors volunteers to help with music at a local primary school by playing the piano. Along with a couple of others, they introduced recorder lessons, singing during assemblies and musical shows in the summer and at Christmas. That was seven years ago.

At first they worked mostly with the older children, then gradually involved the younger classes step-by-step. It wasn’t always easy to get time with the kids to practice and a lot were shy or embarrased to take part.

This week she noticed that when playing a song as everyone left assembly, one of the children started singing along and then the rest all joined in spontaneously.

It takes a long time to change the culture of a place but it can be done.

What behaviours would you like to change in your business or team? More knowledge sharing and less ‘silo working’? More innovation and less “that will never work here”? A better balance between work and the rest of life?

Whatever it is, you should start making the change now. Getting them to sing takes time.

Tags: behaviour, culture, organisation

Posted in Do | No Comments »

Tag: organisation

Phil's Blog