At the Interface

What If Potential Isn't the Problem?

Most organisations spend their effort building potential. Few spend any locating what's already quietly suppressing it. Five examples of organisational interference, and a bonus that changes how you see all of them.

You've Made Patient Experience a Strategic Objective. So Why Isn't It Shaping Your Strategy?

The question for NHS and DHSC leaders isn't whether patient experience is in your strategy. It's whether the architecture you're building will actually deliver it.

The Strategic Objectives Are Sound But The Culture Isn't Ready

When culture isn't aligned with strategy, progress with bringing the strategy into being quickly stalls.

Why Remote Teams aren’t all Plain Sailing – and How to Calm the Water #2

Are your results with remote working being limited by the tools you're using? It's a factor many organisations are blind to because they've always worked the way they do.

Why Remote Teams aren’t All Plain Sailing - and How to Calm the Water #1

Have you been missing those coffee machine conversations while working remotely? Noticing that the lack of spontaneous communication has an impact on your work and relationships?

Why Poor Punctuation could be your Weakest Link

Punctuation is important, right? Without it, a string of words won’t necessarily make sense. The same goes for our work. We need punctuation points over the passage of time in order to keep some sense of reference to what we’re working towards.

Why Generalists are the Secret Ingredient to the Future

Does 2020 mark the start of an era where the balance between specialists and generalists comes more into equilibrium? Will the speed of change and volatility in the marketplace place more demand on generalists? We think so, read on to find out why https://bit.ly/2QXz9FA

What Have Dignity And Respect Got To Do With It?

Recently a large organisation we work with launched a Dignity and Respect workshop for its staff. Why? Well customer feedback suggested that this was an area for improvement. The workshop took 90 minutes and underlined why it's so important for customers to be treated well, and the sorts of behaviours that are expected of the organisation's staff. The result? Fuming staff. Read on to find out why.

What an Experience

How's the customer experience with your company? How easy is it for them to do business with you? How do you most want your customers to feel while doing business with you? Anxious, uncertain, annoyed, frustrated? We guess that’d be a no. Yet there are still so many businesses that continue to generate these feelings in their customers.

Was Steve Jobs's most important decision not directly product related?

On his return to Apple in 1997, one decision Steve Jobs made arguably determined their future success. Find out more...

To Delight or Not Frustrate? That is the Question

There’s a world of difference between a customer experience-focussed company and a customer service-focussed company: it’s a profound cultural difference, and to make the shift from one to the other isn’t necessarily easy, but it IS possible.

The Three Conversations System Leaders Aren't Having

Here are three conversations I keep seeing systems avoid: telling hospitals they'll be doing less, asking GPs "What are you going to stop?" and being honest that things will get messier first.

The Sequencing Problem Nobody's Talking About

You cannot shift demand to primary care until you've built the capacity to handle it. But you cannot build that capacity without shifting resources away from secondary care. Yet you cannot shift resources away from secondary care while it's still managing that demand.

The Curious David Bowie Effect

Fundamentally, this is what’s behind everything that prevents us realising our full potential: things like stress, overwhelm, anxiety, office politics, levels of busy-ness, baggage from previous encounters and so on. The performance of an organisation is a function of the quality of its people’s thinking. When the quality and clarity of thinking improves, great things happen.

On a Hiding to Nothing? The Impossible Quest for Neutrality

Is acting as a neutral vessel when facilitating truly a realistic aim? Experience shows it's impossible, so what's the next best alternative?

More Control is Not the Answer

Getting your team aligned is one of the most important things you can do as a team leader, particularly when your people work remotely.

Leaders: Right Now You Have Everything to Lose

Tough times bring our values to the fore, like a magnifying glass analysing the degree of alignment between what we say we value and our day-to-day behaviours. If you show any cracks here, it'll come back to bite you...

I'm Honest, Right?

The one thing followers most want from a leader is honesty. Honesty ranks head and shoulders above all the other wants of followers. It's the number one thing to get right, yet many leaders in large organisations inadvertently create an impression of dishonesty. Read on to find out how this happens.

How Decision Making Unwittingly Limited the World’s Future

How you make decisions in your organisation has a huge bearing on the longer-term outcomes you bring into being. Yet for most teams and organisations we work with, this area starts out being a blind spot.

Graphic Recording and Groups: how much value does it add?

As a professional facilitator I’m very aware of the importance and value of visually summarising what’s being discussed by groups, but at the recent European International Association of Facilitators’ conference an interesting question arose. It seems to have become best practice to have a graphics expert work alongside groups to create a visual summary of what the group discusses. However for some it's not always easy to recall what's depicted. So what should we do?

Could you be more specific please?

Remote working puts a magnifying glass on our communication. We’re no longer in the context-rich setting of an office where we pick up a lot through background conversations, non-verbal communication and chance meetings.‍

Bringing About Organisational Change

An interview with Alastair Olby on bringing about change in organisations. When do traditional methods work, and when could you be making life easier by taking more of a cutting edge approach?

Are Meetings Taking Over Your Life?

So many people are finding there's precious little time to do their normal job after all the meetings they have to attend. Read on to find out how come core principles for meetings can make a big improvement.