Be careful what you wish for… After blathering on about Trojan Mice for ages people have actually paid attention. Thank you Paul Taylor for the mentions in this post ‘The Complex Problem with Big Change Programmes’ and ‘People Aren’t Sick of Change, They are Sick of Change Programmes’. There’s an important point in Paul’s posts. […]
Ritual Dissent, Facilitation that Goes Beyond Comfortable Consensus
Ritual Dissent: “We do that here. It’s just that the dissent happens once people have gone back to their desks and they destroy the idea” Anon. Just for the record, what I’m talking about here is: Dissent as a strongly held difference of opinion and Ritual as a set of fixed actions that are part […]
Learn the Rules Like a Pro, So You Can Break Them Like an Artist.
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist” is attributed to Pablo Picasso. Variations of it have been used widely by people from The Dali Lama to Fashion Guru Alexander McQueen, which is where my story begins… Once upon a time my friday evenings typically involved quality moments at […]
Trojan Horses are not Trojan Mice. 5 Questions to Spot the Difference.
Trojan Horses and Business Case Option Appraisals. I’ve always had a deep suspicion about the option appraisals you see in business cases. It feels to me like a one of those corporate games that lurk in the shadows. You play by the rules and get the answers YOU want. It might not be the best […]
Loving and Learning from Failure. Great idea, but how does it work?
“Accept that failure will happen and learn the lessons”. That could be a classic from the dictionary of “easy to say, hard to do” inspirational quotes. You know the ones, they get posted all over Facebook with backgrounds of epic landscapes or golden sunsets. I fully agree with the sentiment, but how does this work in a […]
Learning from Failure. The more it hurts the better you learn.
I’ve heard lot of people recently going on about how necessary it is to fail. “Fail fast, fail forward”, “Learn the lessons from failure, and move on”, “Take risks and accept that some things will fail”, “Share your mistakes”. It’s all a bit worrying if you’ve spent your working life in organisations where failure (and […]
My epic communication fail…… The 4 Foot Post Story
This week has been about failures in communication. I’ve ended up with 16 feet of timber for fence posts, excellent. Unfortunately it wasn’t in the shape of the two 8 foot lengths I needed. I got four 4 foot lengths. It might as well have been firewood. I could put this down to a sophisticated […]
Crowdsourcing, could this be the groovy new name for staff ideas schemes?
Recently someone important told me that Crowdsourcing was “old hat, and we’ve moved on from that”. What they had moved on to wasn’t explained but I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface of Crowdsourcing in the world I occupy. Fortunately I went to an IdeasUK event last week which was focussed on how social media […]
Low Trust Costs You Money
“low trust cultures have lower productivity, more defective products, more rework and more toxic politics” Stephen Covey You just know this makes sense. If you’re not convinced, have a look at this video of Dr Covey explaining what he means. Better still just close your eyes and listen to him speak, his voice is incredibly reassuring. We know […]
What’s eating the Trojan Mice?
Last week I posted about setting free Trojan Mice and argued that when faced with complex situations we need to carry out multiple ‘safe to fail’ pilots (rather than large single option solutions) . All very fine, but once you’ve set the Trojan Mice free, how do you give them the best chance of success? Learning […]
What's the PONT 