You have a culture if your organisation is over a few days old. It’s made of how you do things and is rooted in values. It’s also in flux. Every person you hire and fire, office you open and close, market you enter or exit shapes activity and know-how. I’ve previously written...
Hands up if you have a ‘to-do’ list. I suspect nearly everyone does. Now hands up if you have a ‘done’ list. Fewer if any, hands in the air. Me among you. I stumbled upon the idea last week from Oliver Burkeman, a favourite thinker about how to use our...
Forbes Magazine describes the idea of staff engagement as “the emotional commitment the employee has to the organisation and its goals”.And organisations’ desire for that commitment often kicks off a slew of things designed to motivate people and measure how they’re doing.But those motivations and measures are distant from people’s...
Too many conversations about values start by asking are they right or wrong. But for most organisations “How do we use them?” is a more worthy and useful question.I’ll go further. It’s the only question that truly matters. And I’m not talking about laundry lists of behaviours for doing this...
When an organisation puts a ‘fun place to work’ in their values, they often mean a games room, funky furniture and kombucha on tap. Not how they carry out the unheroic work living beneath the trappings.The Play Ethic author Pat Kane says play “Helps release thoughts that are locked in...
Experience without expectations is unthinkable — literally. What I believe will happen plays a prominent part in how I feel about what does happen.Even when it’s part of a subconscious story I didn’t know I was telling myself.So, why should organisations even try to shape people’s experience?Because even a modicum...
Anyone who has ever tried to change an organisation’s culture can attest to legacy’s sticky hold, where the pull of the past routinely stymies good intentions.How to break through the inertia is the question wrestled with by every organisation taking a deliberate approach to their culture.Culture is built one action...
These days, it feels like every damn thing I do is called a journeyI’m not buying a drill. I’m on a home improvement journey.I don’t need to make a different choice. I’m on a change journey.I’m not visiting my doctor. I’m on a wellness journey.I don’t deposit money into my...
Ask people what their organisations need to do better, and nine times out of 10, they will say communicate. Whether it’s too much or too little, it’s never just right. When it comes to communication, we have a Goldilocks problem.If you think communication is not your job, you’re wrong. Everyone...
