“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare”. Japanese Proverb. Some people love to plan and others hate it, believing it restricts their flexibility to respond and arguing they work in such a changeable environment that its simply not worth it. Maybe they’ve experienced a turgid bureaucratic process that was only focused on financials and over time [...]
Creating accountability – a missing step in achieving your goals? How many times have you been in meetings with people who you thought were accountable to deliver tasks, only to find that was not what they believed? Its particularly frustrating when these people report to you. As a leader of cross functional projects the challenge becomes even larger and the [...]
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do”. Michael Porter What are the things you are not going to do? This always seems to be a challenge for organisations and I have seen many leaders avoid this question because they want to see all their ideas implemented. Projects were selected because they were important and once time has [...]
You’ve set the organisational goals that are needed for success in the calendar year. (If you haven’t, see the article on setting goals for 2018!) How do you make sure that these goals have the best chance of being realised? 1. Scope out what the outcome of each goal will look like It’s important to be clear about what the [...]
Setting annual goals for an organisation can be challenging, when you don't have a long-term plan and don't have the time or resources to create one. But it doesn't stop you from looking ahead and engaging your team to ensure that everyone is working towards the same end goal and that you will have a successful 2018. If you do [...]
One of the most impactful parts of any team meeting is when there is agreement on the behaviours that, when adopted by team members, will enable success. This is effectively done as soon as you have confirmed the outputs of a meeting, by asking “How do we need to behave in order to achieve our outputs?” Sounds a bit childish? [...]
Is a facilitator really needed? There is a broad mix of opinions. Facilitators are seen as invaluable by some, whilst others see it as a luxury that should not be needed if you are a strong leader. A changing business environment is driving the need to focus on better facilitated meetings, but there are times when you can run meetings [...]
Why would you want a more effective partnership? Organizations are relying more and more on various kinds of partnerships to grow, streamline their operations and enter new markets. These can be in the form of joint ventures, strategic alliances or simple supplier-customer transactions. Scant attention has been paid to making these partnerships the best they can be, and too often [...]
Organisations can grow in many ways, organically or through joint ventures or acquisitions. This can be a messy process as growth brings new challenges, as well as realizing the revenue and administrative cost savings that are rightly the focus of the growth. One big challenge ensuring alignment to objectives across the organisation was covered in a recent post. Another [...]
Remember the days when life was simple. We had an idea and we could command our organisation to follow. There was an automatic alignment of resources. Why its hard to achieve alignment The command and control organisation is harder to find now. A long time ago Lewis Carroll said, “No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise” and this light-hearted [...]
