I’ve had a fairly typical week of FaceBook. The usual requests to ‘like’ the page of an organisation or group and share posts (that will bring me “great wealth and world peace”). I usually ignore them all. However I didn’t ignore one this week. I pressed ‘like’ because it was from my friend Mark who’s […]
Meetings are the symptom of bad organisation. Yes, but no, but maybe?
For anyone who works in a large organisation this will resonate. You can back it up with comments you might have heard over the years, like; “meetings suck the life-force out of me”, “that’s two hours of my life I will never get back” and “that was a big waste tax payers / shareholders money”. Top […]
Newsletter vrs Podcast, Who Wins? Remember, a paper newsletter can also keep you warm.
My father in law once told me about how managed the mountains of mail that landed on his desk as the Head of a large High School. One of his routines was to drop all of the newsletters neatly into a box with the intention of reading them at the end of term. Mostly they […]
Guilt Free Continuous Improvement with Cardboard and Sticky Tape
Good News! I’ve found a way of not feeling guilty about ‘over’ enjoying myself during the sort of team building events where I have to build the Eiffel Tower out of cardboard, pipe cleaners and sticky tape. Many people will have participated in similar exercises (with variable degrees of enthusiasm) but I suspect that most […]
Dysfunctional organisations can turn a good person bad.
You may have heard the proverb “if you sup with the devil you need a (very) long spoon”. The idea is that if you mix with bad people you should be careful not to be influenced by them and start behaving badly yourself. It’s a very old sentiment that was mentioned as far back as […]
Sticking it to the Man! Painted Sparrows on Alcatraz and Disengaged Employees.
Apologies to any birdwatchers that recognise this as a Painted Bunting, and not a common brown sparrow that has been ‘jazzed up’ by an Alcatraz inmate. I read about the Alcatraz painted sparrows in a book by former inmate Darwin Coon. Back in the 1960s the Alcatraz prisoners creatively used their painting equipment on the […]
Opportunity in Adversity. Glass Half Full Thinking at Arriva Trains Wales (@ArrivaTW)
Here’s quick follow up to the post about Arriva Trains Wales and their journey to improved customer service. Last week saw another blip on the tracks. On Tuesday morning damaged signaling cable caused significant disruption. I know because I was due to meet people who were stuck at Newport (and I picked it up through Twitter). It […]
Engaged or actively disengaged employees. Where do you focus energy?
Here is a guest post from my good friend Ena Lloyd. A better biog will follow once I get some decent internet connection in Tuscany. Thanks Ena….. I also attended the IdeasUk Employee Engagement network meeting, hosted by the Wales Audit Office in Cardiff, where it was great to meet colleagues not only from the […]
Three Very Different Organisations, Five Common Words. IdeasUK Employee Engagement Network Meeting.
Last week I had the great joy of attending an IdeasUK Employee Engagement network meeting in Cardiff, hosted by the Wales Audit Office. The three organisations presenting workshops were incredibly different yet, I picked up on five common themes: Longevity, Trust, Evidence, Belief and Passion. Question: Are these the key elements of success for any […]
Getting beyond the 1% rule – Intrinsic motivation and online communities
Recently I posted about the rule of 1% for online participation and why I think it still applies in many of the online communities I frequent. This is a ‘note to self’ and a plea to a few people I know with the ‘build it and they will come’ philosophy for online knowledge sharing. I […]
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