motivation

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31 January 2012

Roots are for vegetables?

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, communication, motivation, relationships | Tags: , , , |
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The title is a quote, fittingly from a food critic turned journalist and documentary maker: Jonathan Meades. Equally fittingly, Meades television output has a distinctly ‘marmite’ flavour: some people will lap up the breadth of source material and viewpoints, while others will blanch at some of the sourer notes or just flinch facing a monstrous feast of syllables. Mangling a culinary metaphor mercilessly, Meades is a man who serves up curate’s eggs by the dozen, some highly nutritious, some possibly addled. Approach iPlayer with caution. But, returning to earth – or, rather, Earth – he actually wasn’t talking about food. He was talking about how different cultures think about and value diversity.

Even if you are a BBC4 watcher with a thesaurus perched next to your remote control, some background might help. Apart from his print and TV work, Meades is also Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and (in the language of its own website) a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. His work, as blogger Aethelred the Unread describes it by comparison with the documentary-maker Adam Curtis, has a point to make:

Like Curtis, he’s not so much a polemicist for a particular viewpoint as he is a polemicist for the necessity of thinking for oneself. Like Curtis, he’s interested in unorthodox juxtapositions (especially of apparently serious and trivial things), and in approaching weighty topics from unusual angles.”

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26 January 2012

Faith, value and returns on investment

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, communication, leading performance, learning transfer, line managers, motivation, relationships, reward and recognition | Tags: , , , , |
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Like so many words that start with ‘f’ (fairness or federalism, for example), faith can be a topic that leaves some of us slightly twitchy. As a word, its roots are actually secular: it derives from the Latin word for trust, and the religious sense was a 14th century acquisition. But for all the trouble humanity has wrought upon itself around faith in a theological sense, is it worth asking if we have successfully mastered the idea of faith in the broader, earthly sense?

I came across an old adage – “Fear can keep us up all night long, but faith makes one fine pillow” – that left me wondering if we don’t put too much emphasis on what we believe about the world around us, rather than on being mindful or receptive to the faith that others have in us? Most of us appreciate the merits of a fine pillow: whether we hold to a religion or live as atheists or agnostics, our lives are still touched by sorrow, frustration, setbacks or doubt, and a little pampering never goes amiss.  In terms of the comfort or sense of strength that it can bring, faith can definitely be its own reward. But I’m thinking about the idea of faith in a less … well, self-centred way: the benefits we can bring about by showing faith in others.

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24 January 2012

Respect, innit? Pedestals, plinths and politeness

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, HR, line managers, management, motivation, relationships | Tags: , , |
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There was an entertaining, provocative and feisty – in a nice way – guest post at HRFishbowl earlier this month by Chris Fields that caught my eye, and its title gives a good indication of the content: The Audacity of HR. Its main argument is summed up in one of its own highlighted sentences:

Maybe we should stop talking about ourselves as if we were a different breed.”

Before anyone puts their hand up to ask to complain (there’s a comment box below, by the way), I come not to bury HR (although the praise might not be fulsome.) In some ways, the piece strikes the same nerve endings that The Guardian’s HR: Friend or Foe? article did last year – although in this instance the comments have been much more favourable.

In this particular case, one of the issues raised was HR professionals’ reaction to being laid off: a first person lesson in “this time it’s personal”. As one commenter noted:

Having seen first hand the attitude of *some* HR pros when on the orgs side of the desk vs the being laid off side of the desk this is a great reminder to us all that what HR pros do is not *just* business. It affects the lives of fellow humans in big ways all the time. When we forget that we get it wrong.”

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17 January 2012

All work and no play: how to strangle innovation

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, communication, HR, leading performance, learning theory, learning transfer, line managers, management, motivation, relationships, reward and recognition, talent management | Tags: , , , |
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HRZone recently published an interesting article by Emma Littmoden, partner at The Living Leader, called Can HR devise rules that stimulate not stifle innovation? A question that begged for a response – possibly a fairly abrupt one – from the organisational equivalent of ‘the cheap seats’, I thought, so it’s lack of comments so far comes as a surprise. Perhaps everyone else’s HR departments have issued memos banning employees from posting comments at HRZone?

There were quite a few points I wanted to pick Emma up on, in the nicest possible way. First of these was her surprise at Apple’s apparent introduction of stern social media protocols, given the money it makes from handheld devices that encourage ‘the free-flowing ideas of the individuals on the payroll’. Once some of the world had stopped loading candle apps on their iPads and leaving £400’s worth of hi-tech equipment outside shops to mourn Steve Jobs (I’m no accountant, but a tea-light would have said the same, and been far cheaper and less of a personal data security risk), I got the impression that the control-freak tendencies of the recently deceased were aired more freely than previously. And Apple, for all the design savvy of its products (for which thanks should strictly speaking go to Johnny Ive), is a company that makes it very hard to dig beneath the OS, install open source software, and is very keen that we load our (very profitable) new toys with apps, tunes, books, movies and so on bought from an online store that very much runs by their rules. Apple’s version of the world is impeccably stylish, but pretty tightly closed. I’m not sure everyone wants to rule the world, but Apple is keener than most: their internal application of the tendency didn’t surprise me in the least.

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12 January 2012

Book Review: Getting Naked by Patrick Lencioni

Posted by anton franckeiss under behavioural change, book reviews, communication, motivation, relationships | Tags: , , , , |
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As a highly successful business author, Patrick Lencioni may well need no introduction, although his individual style – imparting lessons through business fables – is very much a personal hallmark. From my first encounter with his book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team (which my colleague, Chris Rogers, reviewed here), I was immediately drawn to the way that he delivers his lessons in the form of a story, complete with characters, drama and plot. I had to consciously leave aside my reservations that his approach omitted the structure, methodology and models to support his argument… but as it turned out, I did not have to wait too long to sigh with relief. I found everything I sought at the back of the book.

It helped to draw me in that the first two dysfunctions he tackled were lack of trust and avoiding conflict, themes and experiences that chimed with my own thoughts and frustrations when dealing with many global senior managers and executives. Won over by the style and approach, I read on through the remaining dysfunctions and found myself appreciating a very satisfying read. (Satisfied enough to turn to some of his other works, where I found rich material on a range of approaches and ideas to free up thinking, manage meetings and handle change.)

His most recent book, Getting Naked: A Business Fable about shedding the Three Fears that Sabotage Client Loyalty, differs from his earlier output. Rather than the global CEO/CIO population, Lencioni has aimed this book at “anyone whose success is tied to building loyal and creating sticky relationships with the people they serve” – including not just service providers of many stripes but also people in his own trade: consultants.

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10 January 2012

Film Review: The Iron Lady

Posted by Ed under communication, leadership development, motivation | Tags: , , , , |
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Looking at the coverage that The Iron Lady – a biopic of Margaret Thatcher, for those who’ve somehow managed to miss it – has so far inevitably collected, opinion is fittingly divided. Knowing I was going to see it, as it was a friend’s choice as part of her day of birthday events, I’d been following newspaper articles for a while. It struck me that the first of many ironies about the film was that those who were speaking out against the film had almost certainly not seen it. One of the leading character’s repeated points in the film is that feeling has taken precedence over ideas and thinking in modern life (one wonders what she’d have made of this recent article), yet many of those speaking out against the film seemed to be doing so as they ‘felt’ it was inappropriate or wrong. One wonders what the lady herself would have said to them. (Although wondering is something that the film is likely to generate a lot of.)

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5 January 2012

Think of hope as a doorstep

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, coaching, HR, learning theory, learning transfer, life, motivation, recruitment, relationships | Tags: , , , |
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Ah yes, January. Bit of an opinion divider as months go. Some of us are raring to go, all ‘out with the old and in with the new’ – purging ourselves of brandy butter and port, and filling the void with earnest resolutions. Some of us are closer in sentiment to an old Flanders and Swann song:

Dark November brings the fog/Should not do it to a dog.
Freezing wet December, then/Bloody January again!

My own take on resolutions is probably closer in spirit to an Oscar Wilde quote – “The basis of optimism is sheer terror”. The spur to think about changing things springs predominantly from the horror of the idea of more of the same old same old. Which in turn requires a modicum of awareness that things could at the very least be different, and possibly better. Faced with thinking or feeling “Uh oh, here we go again”, one answer is to go somewhere different.

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22 December 2011

Book Review: Leaders Make The Future by Bob Johansen

Posted by Ed under behavioural change, book reviews, communication, HR, leadership development, leading performance, learning transfer, life, management, motivation, organisational development, relationships, teamwork | Tags: , |
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The future is a tricky thing. An opening sentiment I’m sure many economists, policy makers and politicians would agree with right now, but also a logical truism. Books about the future and what it will bring always set themselves to invite ridicule a few years down the line, and have an inevitable lack of concrete foundations: what the future holders, even for professional futurologists such as Bob Johansen, can only ultimately be subjective guesswork. Whether we are looking at the future of work (as Richard Donkin did in another book reviewed here), of leadership, of organisations, or of society, it’s worth remembering a lesson from talent management: past performance is not a reliable guide. Yet, as Marshall McLuhan once observed, “We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.”

As a former President and Board member of the Institute For The Future, Bob Johansen should be as qualified a guide to what lies ahead as we are likely to find, drawing on four decades of experience of future casting for some of the world’s largest organisations. By its very nature, the future has always been uncertain; recently, the level of uncertainty seems to be increasing and leaders can no more be immune for anxiously wonder what it will mean for them than anyone else. Books such as Leaders Make The Future are, perhaps, only to be expected: that Johansen is one of a small number of authors essaying serious attempts to address this audience is to be welcomed.

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