How do you feel when you hit a big problems, or there is a confrontation? Does it represent an opportunity, or a scary threat that makes you want to avoid the person or situation involved? Where do problems end up in your team – the top or bottom of the pile? Who ultimately fixes them [read more]

First thing this morning, before I did anything I’d planned to do, I found myself checking my emails. One of them came from BIE, an interim management company who had recently come to realise the full impact of email on their working day and had decided to make a change. It reminded me of just [read more]

When I first drafted this post, I was thinking just about the benefits of flexible working space. In many situations I believe these benefits are there to be had, especially where larger teams work together and a level of noise is an acceptable part of the working environment. But what about where concentration, problem solving [read more]

In Peopleware – Productive Projects and Teams - Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister the authors describe their experience of software development projects. They highlight just how key people are to the whole IT equation. Through well presented ideas and tales of their experience they demonstrate the massive cost of NOT investing in the management [read more]

Do we need to understand how coaching works in order to benefit from it? What does increasing awareness and responsibility actually do? I was coaching a coach the other day (he coaches me too) and as he was thinking about how you sell coaching, we got onto how coaching works. Should we try and explain [read more]

Do you know what your organisation really thinks about IT? Why not use a 360 degree review to find out? I’ve seen 360 degree reviews used for all sorts of personnel situations. Often they are a routine part of the Human Resources cycle. Sometimes they are used to get a broader perspective of a problem [read more]

No, not an advert for that insurance company. But some thoughts on opensource: Telephony (VOIP and Asterisk), web searching (google etc), operating systems (Linux, Android) email services (too many to mention) as well as Firefox, OpenOffice and Java are all examples of free and mostly leading edge technology. Yet the majority of organisations [read more]

“dis” ability has all sorts of connotations – from wheelchairs to mental illness and learning disabilities. Yet some of the most talented and brilliant individuals in the world count as disabled.  While many organisations have better access for physical disability, overall you are unlikely to be attracting “dis”abled [read more]

As the new football (soccer) season kicks off, it’s amazing to hear all the talk of new, expensively bought in talent. Of who is going to make space for the new stars, who will stay but rarely play and who might be good enough to keep them out of the team. Which coaches are involved [read more]

In the consulting world, the CV is taken very seriously. Each client proposal includes the CV’s of the key (sometimes all) of the team. It is often the deciding factor for the client – when they look at those achievements, they want to recognise people who will make similar things happen for them. Good consultants [read more]