Journal

Do you know your blind spots?

In our recent survey of the things that managers struggle with the most, one thing that wasn’t mentioned - partly because of its nature - is blind spots.

Too many meetings at work? Here’s 8 ways to cut down.

We all know meetings are a time suck, they get in the way of the work you need and want to do, and often don't achieve anything.

Are interruptions breaking your day? Here’s what to do about it.

Unfortunately interruptions are an annoying reality of organisational life.

How to deal with imposter syndrome at work

Let’s face it, imposter syndrome, and feeling that you're failing is not a great look.

6 Productivity tips that work and last for 2022

In a recent survey of organisation managers, the number one thing that managers told us they wanted most was clear, practical, actionable, innovative productivity tips that work and last.

10-step guide to better workplace culture post-pandemic

In this 10-step guide to better culture in your workplace we cover: 1.

How to deal with burnout at work

Burnout - the complete mental, emotional, and often physical exhaustion brought on by long term work related stress - is a more serious and widespread issue than you might realise.

Project Management Part 3: what to do after a project is finished.

When you're tasked with project management and you're managing a project, once a project is over - there are no tasks left to complete, the work is signed off, the client is happy - it’s tempting to get busy and just start in on the next project.

Burnout – how to spot the fires and put them out in time

Whilst we all respond differently to remote working, in an always-on post-pandemic world it's been even harder to maintain a work-life balance or find time to relax whilst staying on top of what's going on at work and in the world.

A Return to Work Charter

Working remotely during lockdown has been hard. There’s been the isolation, the homeschooling and the Zoom fatigue.

Getting to the feedback that actually makes a difference

Do you remember your first job? Mine is hard to forget because of the feedback I received.

Project Management Part 2: Things to Do During The Project

With few companies successfully completing 100% of their projects, it’s important to run a project in the right way.

Project Management – three steps to ensure your projects are successful

Project management is a difficult undertaking for any team.

Shout about remote working: a story of good practice

Anna Fraser left a successful career in education to run the family business

How to trust your team when they’re remote working

As the pandemic of 2020 went on, we heard leaders and managers telling us their team was communicating better than ever when remote working because they were, “making much more of a conscious and deliberate effort to talk to each other.

How to stay focussed when working from home (and during lockdowns)

The issue of the moment is how you and your team adjust to a new ‘normal’ way of working, and how you manage your focus and attention.

How to look after your team during a lockdown

It is important to acknowledge the impact lockdown is having on your team and to spend time talking about it because some of your team could be struggling.

6 ways to make remote work easier during lockdown

Here’s 6 ways to make remote work easier Fundamentally, it’s about doing the basics of working well together, more diligently.

Four tools for having better conversations with your team

Despite our increasing reliance on email, messaging, and other digital channels for comms, conversations between people at work are still integral to getting anything done.

So you think you’re a good listener? (And why it matters if you’re not.)

Communication is a really important skill in the workplace.

Are you clear on your Role in your organisation?

You’ve probably realised that your job description is not the best representation of your role and what you do.

How to pool your team’s shared experience to build a better understanding of how your organisation works

How do you discover and explore entrenched patterns inside your organisation? Negative patterns such as gender inequality, destructive conflict, bullying, communication breakdown, and lack of engagement; and positive patterns such as co-operation, collective decision making, empathy, and self-management.

Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us

https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc   In this brilliant video, writer

Think you have freewill at work? Think again.

Power + Systems is the work of Barry Oshry, it’s a model that helps you better see why problems arise within your organisation, and this understanding helps you do something about it.

We make tools for the Messy Stuff

In every organisation, there’s the work, there’s how you do the work, and there’s the relationships between the people doing the work.

How to use Empathy to help build a High Performing Team

Every team starts with an incomplete picture of the people they’re working with, and as they tell you more about themselves, you learn more about where you’ve all come from.

Overcoming the 5 Dysfunctions in a Team

One of the key things we look at when we go into any organisation is team dynamics.

“It’s not email, it’s therapy…” How it might feel to work with us on productivity.

The clients we coach within organisations keep saying to us, “I had no idea it was going to be like this.

The Email Charter: 10 rules to reverse email overload

We’re all drowning in email. And the hours and hours we spend on it are making ever more work for our friends and colleagues.

How to Surf the Urge

One of our productivity coaches, Sally May, is a keen sea swimmer.

Why scaling up may not be the right playbook for your startup

A reaction to all those articles about the right time for Startups to take investment, and whether it’s ever the right time.

Why Planning Matters

No one can avoid doing work as it comes up, but if you never put time aside to plan your work, then all you are left with is reactive working.

How engaged is your team? Here’s a free Culture Audit Toolkit that’ll help you find out, and why you should use it…

If you're a business owner or a manager at any level in any organisation, you need employee engagement.

The Power of Vulnerability – how to have better relationships at work

Someone once said to me that if you want someone to like you, ask for their help.

Why you should stop avoiding difficult conversations

Recently we’ve been noticing that the vast majority of the leadership and culture change work that we do is actually about making it safer for people to have difficult conversations, to talk about the things they find it really difficult to talk about.

How to make sure your people hear what you say with REPLAY

I’d been talking with a client about how she was going to break some difficult news to her team.

How to have better meetings, using LOMO: lo-fidelity moments

LOMO is a way of re-organising meetings so that they’re high trust, self-organising, radically honest interactions.

Once and Future Stories

This is how it works: In pairs initially, participants tell each other stories about things that they think have been great about the organisation.

You have more power than you think. Discover your Circle of Influence and Control

How using Circle of Influence can help you feel more in control A few years ago I was juggling several large and time-consuming projects, and had just started a new business.

How to Make Your Boat Go Faster and Improve Team Performance

Make Your Boat Go Faster is a really straightforward tool.

The Effort Impact Matrix: how to work out what to prioritise

The Effort Impact Matrix is one of the tools we use all the time.

How to get better at delegating: use CPORT

CPORT Tool CPORT is an acronym for a checklist that covers the areas you need to address whenever you’re delegating a task or a project with a team member, or the whole team.

How to stop micro-managing your staff

Transactional Analysis is a longstanding theory about how you can analyse every interaction through ‘transactions’ which are: parent, child, or adult.

How to change the culture in your organisation

A great guru once said culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Stop being the bottleneck!

A few months ago we took a group of Scouts to a week-long camp in the Lake District.

Ask your staff these three questions: if they can’t answer them, you could be in trouble

This was a real surprise to our client and only came to light after they ran one of our culture change programmes.

How to Reduce Time You Spend on Email

If you struggle to find time to get past email to your real work after a holiday, you're not alone.

ARE YOU WILLING TO CONFRONT THE BRUTAL TRUTH?

In the courtroom classic ‘A Few Good Men’,Col Jessep, (Jack Nicholson), starts getting riled under cross examination by the navy lawyer played by Tom Cruise.

THE END OF HAPPINESS?

Just imagine, going to work, and actually enjoying your work, your colleagues, and it actually adding to your life, rather than being something you had to do in order to provide the means to try and be happy elsewhere.