It's important to keep meetings short and snappy as people begin to switch off after 30 minutes. This guest blog post from Olive Keogh in The Irish Times explains why. “A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.” This pithy little...
Do you get lost in trying to diagnose the problems in your business, so you can find the right solution for your staff and yourself? We can save you the trouble! Here’s how to get help, and four ways to make the best use of your business advisers. Telling the doctor...
In your world of work, ‘hard skills’ are technical procedures related to your core business. Examples include the latest law, rules and regulations in your area of expertise, or industry. Ironically enough, these ‘hard’ skills are typically easy to observe, quantify...
You can’t “do” culture change to your organisation. Culture arises from the beliefs and underlying assumptions held by the people in the organisation. Trying to change culture by decree or through training programmes won’t affect people’s beliefs. In today's guest...
What is organisation development and how can it help your business? Here is a simple overview and our answer to the question. With thanks to Koru for the inspiration. No clear direction, management imposing ever tighter controls, increasingly disengaged work force,...
It might seem like an anomaly that sales staff don't want to make new business calls. But we've found that it's a key issue that comes up with client-facing service providers. They will do almost anything but pick up the phone to potential new clients. We look at the...
Bullying is more widespread in business than you might think. It has a huge financial and human impact and shouldn’t be tolerated by bosses. Check out this list for the most common types of bullying behaviour. There is a business case against tolerating nasty and...
Why don’t people want to take accountability at work? Check out this article which shows you how you can build accountability in your business. Why do people avoid accountability? In the best organisations, detailed performance metrics, benchmarks and quantitative...
Appraisals are indeed a waste of time if what you would rather do is fill in paperwork (and complain about it) than talk to somebody eyeball to eyeball, motivating, acknowledging, coaching and training them face to face. Here we suggest a way you can scrap your...
Are you an unhappy boss? If you are, you can expect your employees to be unhappy too. Here are 6 ways you can tackle levels of happiness at work which will impact your bottom line. Often places where people are unhappy are places where the leaders are unhappy too. And...
Find out how to create and manage a brilliant culture that underpins a truly successful growing business.
Find out how to create and manage a brilliant culture that underpins a truly successful growing business.