Your path to business agility
Is your otherwise competent and engaged agile team starting to regularly missing deadlines, produce low quality work, clog or circumvent feedback loops, and roam the halls like zombies—or if you prefer, like white walkers? If so, then the bad news is that your group is burned out. The good news, however, is that you can...
In a hyper-connected world, organizations don’t have to tie themselves to specific people and places to thrive. With the help of software, many are turning to “flash teams,” virtual brain trusts and work forces built on the fly to address specific needs. A concept hatched in Stanford’s computer science department, flash teams use crowdsourcing to...
How to give constructive criticism that works As a project manager, helping your team to reach their full potential or adapt to the roles that are expected of them often requires highlighting where they could be doing something differently. Constructive criticism is when a manager manages to point an employee in the right direction in...
Recent years have seen even greater expectations placed on project managers to align projects with the overall successful course of their organization. This has led to the concept of “Project Portfolio Management” becoming particularly popular. Similar to how investment portfolios seek to balance risk and deliver optimum returns for investors, project portfolio management seeks to...
The organizer and the improviser. The risk-taker and the voice of caution. It takes all kinds to get the job done. But a range of personalities can also lead to clashes in the workplace. One study found that 40 percent of workers report difficulties with conflicting personalities. But this is no reason to start dividing...
In 1996, John Kotter, then a professor at Harvard Business School, published a book, Leading Change, which set out his seminal “Eight Step Change Model”. Despite being written nearly a quarter of a century ago, the Kotter Change Model is regarded as the leading methodology for implementing change management in a team or organization. Understanding...
In recent years, both basketball and executive teams have seen revolutionary changes compared to the days of Jack Welch and Michael Jordan in the 80s and 90s. The game, in both business and basketball, is much quicker, with more emphasis on teamwork, agility, and a dramatic redistribution of traditional roles and responsibilities. The digital revolution...
So far there have been a huge number of issues arising from the decision of Britain to leave the EU (known as “Brexit”), the world’s largest trading bloc. From the removal of free medical care for UK residents living abroad and the need for visas to go on holiday to the loss of “passporting rights”...
Efficiency has come a long way since the days of Henry Ford’s conveyor belt. Yes, Ford revolutionized the manufacturing process at the time, but at the modern world’s pace of innovation and production, efficiency is not just about engineering the most powerful machines. It’s about a simplicity of design that permeates every level of a...
Following the introduction of legislation in 2017 that obligated major companies in Britain to reveal their gender pay gaps. It was deemed necessary to introduce a law which did not necessarily seek to punish private firms but rather to oblige them to self-report information which could assist further policy-making. The results have made for interesting...
