Common challenges you’ve probably noticed Digital development is demanding change in the way businesses are run and how they interact with their audiences and their employees. No matter what sector you’re in, you’re likely to be facing at least one of these challenges: Teams have less face-time as people share, work and interact more remotely. […]
Storytelling is often seen as a communication tool to be used by leaders to influence an audience. But this misses one of the most powerful dimensions of stories – they are things that people, as social animals, have always shared and used to communicate deeper meaning. The sharing of stories has a powerful ability to […]
Technology will disrupt all our businesses in the next 5 years, and play a key role in changing how people work together. We used the pilot of our Leading the Big Conversation workshop to explore what it means for different organisations. Participants from Accenture, ABRSM, BAE Systems, Defra, and Oxfam agreed: Machines will take over […]
I was in Hanover today testing the appetite in Germany for The Big Conversation approach. We were slightly worried because some members of the client’s leadership team had expressed concern about whether the approach would ‘land’ here. We had groups involved in testing work in progress on the current visual – a Big Picture of […]
Leaders often talk about the need to align people behind goals and the challenge of doing so, and yet frequently adopt conventional top down approaches focused on “key messages” that just don’t work when change is so rapid and people expect more adult to adult approaches. A more impactful approach that resonates needs to relate […]
Connecting people The need to connect people with Purpose and Strategy is becoming more pressing as the pace of technology change, globalization and the disruption of markets increases. CEOs and their leadership teams want people aligned and engaged in a way that educates and motivates them so that they can take the initiative to respond […]
Introduction This article aims to help people think through the scope of the conversation they may want to have to define Purpose for their organisation, or part of it. It provides a guideline for helping to think about the most appropriate way to frame the inquiry. It also provides links to other resources, articles and […]
Creating a strong sense of Purpose provides a major competitive advantage for an organisation. This is about why Purpose is so important for engagement with employees and other stakeholders, and it illustrates the growing evidence base supporting this argument. What is organizational purpose? Strategy is concerned with what an organisation wants to achieve, Purpose is […]
Big Pictures portray company strategies and are designed to help individuals and teams have conversations about what the strategy means for them. Some high profile examples like the “New Day on Retail Street” by Sears Roebuck (https://hbr.org/1998/01/the-employee-customer-profit-chain-at-sears) or the “Big Conversation” by TUI Travel (https://www.couravel.com/uploads/portfolio/13/phpPvrMRp.pdf) demonstrate the impact they can have. Despite this, organisations still […]
Lessons from “high stakes” facilitation Here are some reflections on a “high stakes” (for me) event that I ran recently working with John Hovell, who leads on Organisation Development for BAE Systems Group. We led the 2015 NTL Community Day – a large group gathering for some of the UK’s leading change experts and master […]
