Tag: culture

Is your team on the Front Foot?

Front foot No Comments

Of all the things we have thought and published, the piece that clients most repeat back to us is our reflection on The Front Foot Organisation. This framework and tools informs much of our work today, from talks and training to team development and top team time outs.

Is the group you work with most often on the ‘Front Foot’? Are you on the Front Foot (at home or work)?

Have a go at this simple ‘Cosmo-style’ test. Please answer the questions, and give 2 points for ‘totally’, 1 for ‘sort of’ and 0 for ‘no’:

Inspired in DIRECTION:

a) Your team (and organisation) are fully aligned behind a compelling strategy

b) You consider future uncertainties: you are confident of your ability to respond to whatever might happen in flexible and thorough ways

MOMENTUM for implementation:

c) You manage to overcome any inertia by promoting rapid trialling of new ideas, encouraging each other and moving forward fast with things that work

d) You take time to review the lessons you are learning and ensure they are used to guide your next steps

Successful CO-ORDINATION in team working:

e) You explore differences of opinion well, working through conflict to build a focus on shared results

f) You look forward to team meetings as a highly productive part of the working week

BALANCE in individual working lives:

g) You achieve a balance between home and work – and between time to work on your own, and in groups

h) The mood of the team or organisation is positive, tackling any ‘toxic’ behaviours

How did you do? Out of 16? [You can multiply by 6.25 to get at % score (if that is your sort of thing).]

Starting in 2013 we will run a survey to help leaders assess how far their teams and organisations are on the front foot? It will be based on this tried and tested model – and the 6 years of baseline data we have from its use with hundreds of clients.

Interested?

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Another checklist: for success in any field??

Facillitation, Measurement No Comments

You might know that (and fully in sync with the push by surgeon Atul Gawande) we like checklists for avoiding failures of ineptitude…such as this one on facilitation skills  and this on finding a good venue.

A colleague shared this blog – a checklist of 13 things crucial for success – we like it

Here are a few things from the piece by Chase Jarvis.

“Success is each to his or her own, but let’s call it like we see it…So here’s a list of thirteen such things that you should be doing right now – let’s call it your hit list:

6. Iterate.
Nothing–and I’ll say it again, but louder–NOTHING will spring from your creative self fully formed. Genius, clarity, vision–whatever you want to call it–will come in fragments at inopportune moments over days, weeks, months, years. Be ready to catch each one of the iterations and push it out of you. The summary of those iterations will aggregate into something special.

8. Don’t underestimate the fundamentals. Know your craft.
Vision and big-picture-thinking are important, but not at the expense of the fundamentals. You’ve got know the nuts and bolts of what your doing. Skip this item at your own risk.

12. Find some quiet.
Noise, stimulation, and adventure are good for creating the raw building blocks of creativity, but they suck for the most important part of creativity — the synthesis. Synthesis–the gluing together of your ideas–requires some sort of quiet, be it just a moment or bunch of moments. So carve out this time.

13. Help others.
When chasing success too many people play the ‘me’ game. It’s all about ‘me’. Well, contrary to what it might seem, success ain’t just about me. Most people who achieve success are concerned with helping others. Helping others cultivates understanding, humility, compassion, and your network – not to mention, a better world. So don’t just reach up and pull yourself there. Be sure to reach sideways and down too, as often as you can muster

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Energy

Personal productivity No Comments

We liked this piece – on energy and productivity – from HBR recently.

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What creates the vibe…?

Reflect No Comments

When cycling to the station in Cambridge yesterday morning past the railings covered with posters advertising a vibrant yet fringe (for some, controversial) cultural scene, I thought what makes a place memorable?

Is it the physical setting (eg The Lake District, a Indian Ocean beach, The Alps)?

Is it the quality of Architecture and how that fits in a particular place (eg the heart of Paris between the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre, Circular Quay in Sydney, The skyline of New York, the spires of Oxford, The Backs in Cambridge)?

Or the culture and vibe of being somewhere (eg London, Melbourne)?

So what is the (cheesy?) business analogy I will draw? What about considering all three of these when fixing an important meeting (and remember meetings are the DNA of organisational life and don’t have to be like this):

1) What sort of outdoor spaces will you have nearby – a park, a view. I recall a Scandinavian colleague who always wanted a ‘Learning garden’ the group could work in at some point nearby

2) What sort of human-made facilities will you (ideally) need – maybe informed by this list

3) And, crucially, what can you do to get the right vibe and interaction regardless of what you have chosen for the setting (which links to the other 6 Ps, other than place, from our 7P meeting planning framework – )

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What makes for curiousness?

Reflect No Comments

In the film ‘Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy’ George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is confident he can beat the Russian chief spy because his opposite spook has no space in his life for doubt.

In this video Seth Godin, supremo blogger, makes a similar point that fundamentalism drives out curiosity.

I recall a medical colleague years ago sharing the three most important words for doctors:

“I don’t know”…

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Does warmth matter?

Reflect No Comments

A number of years ago we wrote a fair bit about some of the defining aspects in health care, with a particular focus on compassion

This ‘poem’ is a more recent take by one of us.

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More on Noble Purpose Organisations

Reflect No Comments

The more noble the purpose, the more the leadership and the team working, needs to be top notch.

The more passionate and powerful the mission, the more the organisation needs investment to live up to the individual passions and motivations.

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Is caring enough?

Think No Comments

Caring about something is not a sufficient guarantee of doing a good job.

It seems like it might be.

Especially in noble purpose enterprises.

But competence and taking time and space not to impose your own views on your colleagues does too.

Possibly more?

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Curiosity and wonder

Reflect No Comments

On a train…

Before 0700.

Usual commuter types.

Then mother and 18 month old daughter get on.

The child is full of life.

Loving the novelty.

Looking out the window – in wonder at the moving world.

Pointing and calling every man ‘daddy’ (much to the mothers embarrassment!)

This isn’t ‘normal’

Normally…

No kids

No (visible) joy

No uber-curiosity – at least not externally demonstrated.

Rather, we are internally focused in sleep, the papers, laptops and blackberries.

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Noble Purpose

Reflect No Comments

Our Noble Purpose business briefing has led to lots of conversations.

One the questions that comes up a fair bit is this:

“Is commerce more honest?”  

By this, people ask, is it easier to be honest about motivations at work in environments where the clear purpose does not claim the high moral ground of nobility of intention?  And, does it matter…?

Discuss…

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