Culture Change

Does it sometimes feel that your business is fuelled more by optimism than reality? Do your colleagues tell you that customers are happy or (as in the case of a business I once encountered) that ‘no one’s complained yet’? Without putting a damper on things, there’s a very effective exercise you can run to perform a reality check on a big customer or a strategic project. We called it ‘Why did we lose the client?

In work and life, we prize the ability to think quickly. We use the complimentary term ‘agile’ to describe someone who can handle a tough Q&A session. Or ‘sharp’ for an entrepreneur who spots and seizes a business opportunity before anyone else. But, in ascribing quick thinking to intellect, we are generally mistaken. When we make decisions, our brains use two systems. Let’s call them fast and slow.

Have you ever noticed that some patterns of behaviour repeat whenever you talk with certain people? Perhaps it’s a colleague who can never say no, but always fails to deliver. Or a relative whose constant criticism of your children puts you on the defensive. Each time you meet you hope it will be different, but it never is. The theory of Transactional Analysis was developed in the 1950s by psychologist Eric Berne to help people understand...

Ten months after the WHO declared the COVID pandemic over, we’re all living with the digital transformation it stimulated. There have been some changes in working behaviours but I’m not convinced that a positive ‘new normal’ has yet been defined. I’m sure you’ve been in online meetings where one or two individuals seem to dominate the conversation... ‘empty vessels make the most noise’ seems to ring true.

In life and work, people are often admired for their decision-making ability. Most of us would agree with the axiom ‘any decision is better than no decision.’ But are we right? Many people develop a preference for a certain way of decision-making that comes to define them. Psychologists identify at least five common ways that humans make decisions. Most of them reveal more about us than we might like.

Once upon a time, most people began successful careers by developing expertise in a technical, functional or professional domain. Doing your job well meant having the right answers. If you could prove yourself, you’d climb the ladder and eventually move into managing other people. As a manager, you knew what needed to be done, so now you taught others how to do it and evaluated their performance.