Most Recent Blog Posts
To build a great culture, first build teams that work.
Talent loves to work with talent. There is no greater excitement for someone bursting with talent (which is all of us) than to come to work knowing you are in a team where everybody is doing a job they love and doing it well. This is the essence of teams...
Do you suffer from a poverty of talent?
How many of the people you hired deliver on the potential they showed at interview? Managers spend a lot of their time recruiting to fill vacancies in their teams. Yet they frequently complain that the highly accomplished people they hired never seem to...
10 Ways Individuals and Enterprises Benefit When They Build Teams That Work
I sat next to a HR consultant at a wedding reception last week, a charming, intelligent man in his 60s. I learnt about his challenges in dealing with CEOs and the tendencies of some of them to sack people for unforgivable errors, like sitting the wrong way...
Teams That Work – the Stress Kicker
Stress costs the US economy $300 Billion every year in lost productivity, insurance claims, health costs, accidents and the need to replace workers according to the American Society of Stress. Stress is far worse than pressure. Pressure is when you are...
Building Teams that Work is a Job for Loving Leaders
Love productivity. Love efficiency. Love engagement. Love it when people are engrossed in their work. Love it when people come in early because they love what they do. Love it that employees are working in tune with colleagues and not going home in...
Empathy in Business is Essential – But What if You Don’t Have It?
There is now little doubt that empathy - the ability to understand and share another person's experiences, emotions and feelings - is a vital talent in business. According to Entrepreneur.com, ‘Empathy in business dealings, especially for the entrepreneur,...
Talent Alignment Promises A Safer Route to Culture Change
First, for those who haven’t read around this site, a quick explanation of ‘talent alignment’. Our talents are abilities that are entirely natural, they lie within us. They are tied to our sense of purpose. Most of us have an urge to discover and put our...
How Culture Drives Growth. White Paper.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Peter Drucker "Maintaining an effective culture is so important that it trumps even strategy.” Howard H Stevenson - Harvard Business School’s 'Lion of Entrepreneurship'. Company Culture – Why It’s So Important And...
One Group You Need On Board For Your Business Change Project To Succeed.
Everyone knows that most business change projects fail. Some fail outright and end with broken careers and the company returning to its old processes. A larger percentage achieve some of the goals they set out to score but barely cross the breakeven line...
Talent-alignment? Or culture change? A Gardening Productivity Metaphor For Anyone Growing A Business.
A garden had not been well tended. The surface was trampled down. The grass was patchy. Here and there a few bushes grew but there were a lot of weeds. Many plants were overshadowed by others, unable to grow. Parts of the garden were okay to look at and...
9 Reasons To Invest In People Before a Merger or Acquisition.
I'm betting some senior managers would quietly prefer to wait till after a merger before embarking on a talent improvement program. After all, why invest in people who may not be with you any longer after the dust has settled? But that's an unenlightened...
Does your organization’s culture respect your talent?
If it does, it's a great place to work. Employee recognition company Bonusly recently published a great article entitled 10 Dead Simple Ways to Improve Your Company Culture. I liked the article. A lot. But that's probably because I noticed that...
The valuable talent lying about the office.
The booming US stock market is hiding a problem that everyone knows is there but no-one knows how to fix. Most Western business leaders are inadvertently stifling the natural talent in their teams and departments. The complaint that 'I'm not valued' or...
Dear Chancellor. Productivity comes from people, stupid!
Leave the other countries behind. Break out of the downward productivity spiral by focusing on people! Yet again the UK Government tries to solve the productivity issue by using the failed policies of the past: more money desperately thrown at technology...
To attract new talent, give current talent what it wants.
Most people reading this don't keep bees. But if you were asked how to attract bees to your neighborhood I bet most of you would instinctively know the answer: grow flowers. Yet in recruitment, although most companies are also trying to attract busy...
The Win Win Win that’s old, new and still to come.
The talent revolution is the new business productivity wave that's taking over from the total quality programs of the 80s and the process re-engineering and IT waves of the 90s and noughties. The talent revolution delivers wins for people, teams and...
Talent, the Moon and the Deep Blue Sea.
How Talent Was Rediscovered. (Episode 3 in the Clare series.) 'How has talent lain hidden for so long?' Clare was settled in a chrome chair at one side of the long boardroom table. Her PC sat obediently in front of her. I sipped my water while she...
When Strategists Struggle For A Voice
'You're a strategist.' I watched Clare's face carefully to see if there was any reaction. I was recruiting for a city firm and this was her second interview with me. She returned my gaze evenly, like a cat regarding its owner. She knew I had given her...
The Talent Enlightenment
A new force has been discovered and unleashed upon the world. It is set to change the way that organizations are built and managed. It will allow companies to save money even while they double their output. It will also allow individuals, for the first...
Neuroscience: Talent is for whole brain thinkers. Skills reside in the mutinous left hemisphere.
Science has spoken and placed a massive question mark over the prominence given to skills in the career market. Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, in his widely-acclaimed 'The Master and his Emissary' discusses the roles of the two brain hemispheres and their...