Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash First Point: The three true human causes of all problems that exist in your business such as conflict, process breaches, values breaches, safety issues and errors are fear, useless habits and ignorance. Usually it’s a combination of any or all three. For example, a safety incident where a […]
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash It’s not your profit or cashflow, because those are outcomes of something more fundamental and important. And, sorry, I argue that it’s not even your customer, for a similar reason. Unless your business is run entirely by AI or robots, it’s your employees who: operate the systems and processes […]
Photo by Tai's Captures on Unsplash There are high-profile leaders and low or no-profile leaders around the world, in government, commerce and community who have earned the trust and respect of most of their people during these times. You know who they are. They model these values: Compassion: they authentically empathise with those experiencing hardship […]
Photo by Charl Durand on Unsplash “The Elephant in the Room” is that problem which everybody knows exists and won’t confront. You’ll know you’re the problem, if you’re the boss and experience a few of these: Nobody challenges you – probably because you don’t like to be challenged. People won’t take the initiative. Too many […]
I sat with Kelvin (name changed), who’d started his own business a decade ago and now employs 30 staff. He’d weathered the pandemic lockdown and had restarted the business but was deeply concerned about a noticeable drop in productivity from people he knew could do better. “It seems like they’ve not realised we are back […]
The cost of having people with difficult attitudes and behaviours in your workplace is often not measured effectively. However, it’s important to remember that most difficult people don’t mean to be difficult, there’s usually a reason and there’s usually a solution. Below are four ways they do damage, and some measures of that damage. Employee […]
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash Damien and Alan (names changed) joined the business together ten years ago as graduate engineers. Alan had recently progressed to become the firm’s chief operating officer whilst Damien remained a senior project manager. By now Damien’s attitude had become legendary, for all the wrong reasons. Damien’s attitude has been […]
You should be because they are putting at risk everything you are trying to achieve! They are potentially: Sabotaging your changes initiatives. Spreading inaccurate information. Influencing others to stall or dis-engage. Causing good people to leave. Resisting change due to habits or fear of failure. Continuing to do that which must stop. Burning your energy. […]
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash “You need to do better.” “This isn’t good enough.” “Why hasn’t this been done?” “We are lagging in our KPI’s.” “We must deliver better results.” “Come on team, we’re not up to speed.” These are the cries of some leaders and supervisors seeking improvement. They’re taking a pathological approach to improvement […]
Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash Delegating tasks or projects to staff is a critical point where performance and productivity can suffer. How many times have you been frustrated by your people not completing tasks in the manner or time expected? How often have you had to ‘micro-manage’ people into getting the job done? How often has re-work […]
