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I help leaders create intelligent organisations optimised to embrace disruption.

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The surprising future of work

factory worker

Nobody knows the future of work, or the future of anything for that matter, there are too many interacting macro-environmental forces at play. But let’s make a few assumptions and see where that takes us:People have a natural distaste for despair and terror.Some people are curious about discovering their true potential.Leadership is becoming decentralised.First, let’s […]

How to improve employee performance

creativity - 250

If it isn’t clear already, my professional focus is on helping organisations build people-centric organisations. To that end, I encourage leaders to consider cognition as an asset class. Much of the market attention is on artificial cognition (AI). But it is human cognition where the most significant value creation opportunities exist.Not everyone shares this view. […]

The future of culture

The future of culture

Tribal expulsion, anyone?Culture is the binding agent that endeavours to minimise wasteful friction within a social group. If you want to be part of this group you will need to behave in a particular manner. And if you don’t, you will be drummed out of the tribe. Knowing that tribal expulsion was a death sentence […]

Leading change – why transformation efforts fail

fail

Harvard Business Review published an article, by management thought leader John Kotter, of the same title back in 1995. The mid-nineties was a more innocent era. Google and Facebook had yet to be conceived. Netflix and Amazon were in nappies. The thrust of the HBR article was on the management errors that were likely to […]

The super-resilient organisation

Prey

Unlike resilience, super-resilience doesn’t just look to endure the storm, but to grow stronger because of the tumultuous experience. Resilience is good, but it makes for a stressful / miserable existence if the storm never ends. It’s not over There is a sense that we are emerging from the irregularity and disruption of the Covid-19 […]

Hybrid working – It’s complicated!

Cubicles

One would imagine that it’s a ‘no brainer’. Let people work where they can be most productive.But there are a few complications:The industrial factory model, underpinning many organisations today, focuses more on human activity than productivity.The industrial factory model, which is typically underpinned by a contract rather than trust, means that bosses would prefer to […]

What’s wrong with HR?

MisperceptionsIt is not uncommon to hear business leaders expound on the importance of talent management. But the truth is that if HR is not in the top team, then talent management is no more important than stationery management.The reality is that HR in the top team is a rarity, particularly in organisations birthed in the […]

What’s wrong with employee wellness?

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Achilles’ heel? Employee wellness, or workplace wellness, is an established and lucrative approach to improving the ‘mean time between failure’ of the organic components of your business model. Humans have always been a ‘weak point’ in the industrial era factory. Increasing market disruption and the consequent uncertainty has put this model under tremendous stress. As […]

How to be more intelligent

Vitruvian man

The 4 FsAccording to evolutionary biologists, all life forms exhibit the same four drives. These being to fight, flee, feed and ‘reproduce’. I would add ‘freeze’, and in relation to social animals, ‘friend’ (verb). Everything our ancestors did and everything we do today is underpinned by these instinctive motivations.In essence, human existence boils down to […]

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