2020 has witnessed the world’s largest work-from-home (WFH) experiment in history. And now, as countries reopen but Covid-19 remains a threat, organisations are struggling with whether and how to have workers return to their offices. But as with any experiment there is also opportunity – a chance to develop new and better ways of working…
Deciding to let employees work either remotely or in the office requires more than just the provision of remote technology. Instead, it will require a change in how employee performance is measured – a shift from ‘being seen’ to actually producing results. Presenteeism, the art of being at your desk long enough and often enough…
The fight against Covid-19 has emphasised the importance of hand-washing, while Black Lives Matter has reminded us that bias and prejudice are still a dangerous part of the human condition. So what’s the connection? The answer is the “Semmelweis effect”, a metaphor for our human tendency to reject new evidence or knowledge because it contradicts…
I thought it might be helpful to share a number of key findings from a recent return to work survey completed by my colleagues at PSA on behalf of a retail client. On the back of which I’ve done some further thinking about what happens next. The key findings were: A majority were anxious about…
Mike Peckham and James Whitehead Visiting Fellows University of South Wales Business School In just four months COVID 19 has changed the world; from the first reported cases in Wuhan in China at the end of December to today, our world has been reconfigured. Our language has a new vocabulary that now includes terms such…
Networks are currently in the firing line for having spread coronavirus along with all the associated conspiracy theories that are only making matters worse. But networks are also critical to finding a vaccine and overcoming the dislocation of social distancing. A virile network will spread the good, the bad and the just plain ugly –…
When Mackenzie and Jeff Bezos divorced last year speculation was rife as to how much Mackenzie would receive out of an estimated $136bn fortune. In an excellent article at the time, Louise Matsakis,[1] challenged the hype about Mackenzie ‘becoming’ the richest woman in the world because, as half of the richest couple on earth, she…
The end of the year is a time for reflections and resolutions. And not a moment too soon, because the leaders and managers I coach are very busy doing a lot of stuff with little time to think. I imagine you are the same (so I won’t burden you with a long article, just 396…
Every day we are bombarded with data. So much that we simply cannot process it all, and even the fraction we can manage is inevitably at the mercy of our subjective bias. So when making decisions we all need a Red Team to keep us honest. In 2016, a report by IBM Marketing Cloud revealed…
We know that men are more likely to rise to leadership positions than women. According to a CIPD review of FTSE 100 Companies in 2016 there were fewer female CEOs (6 in total) than CEOs named David (8) or Steve/Stephen (7). We also know that social networks are critical to professional advancement. This made me…
Across organisations and communities there are some leaders who manage to get things done through their sheer ability to understand how the network of individuals connect on the ground, who to talk to and how to bring together people in just the right constellation of effort that can make things happen. Our work with leaders…
In a world where things are moving much faster than ever we need more leadership from more places. Where things are more complex, more ambiguous, and more interdependent, we don’t have time to wait for everything to go up the chain of command and back down again. We need more people to step up and…
We are delighted to announce the publication of the PSA Guide to Leading Your Network. The Guide is designed for experienced and first time, or aspiring, leader-managers and can used for individual reflection and development or in facilitated group workshops. Its purpose is to help managers identify and make the most of the informal networks…
The most exciting things happening in science, technology and business are happening where fields converge – at the intersections and edges. The divisions between formerly separate industries are breaking down and the real opportunities for growth are where those industries interconnect. Self-driving cars don’t just need automotive engineers, they also need people who understand software,…
It has been said that assumption is the mother of all cock ups. Well it may not be the mother, but it is certainly a close family member – like when you walk into a glass door that you assumed wasn’t there. The problem is that our brains are very adept at pattern-recognising and pattern-making.…
Business leaders talk about the need for greater collaboration, flexibility and initiative in today’s business environment. Now it seems to me that there are a lot of people involved with the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement who are demonstrating exactly those qualities. Love them or loathe them we would do well to learn from them. If you…
Research indicates that at work more information and knowledge flows through informal social networks than through official organisational hierarchies and structures. This suggests that the formal structure of an organisation, as manifested in its organizational chart or organogram, gives little indication of how most work actually gets done, which further suggests that identifying and understanding…
I was working with the Consumer Council for Water this month in the heart of Birmingham. Part of the city centre is a building site at present and consequently one of my favourite statues is missing. It used to stand outside the old Register Office on Broad Street and is a gilded bronze statue of…
Almost as long as I have been a consultant I have been told that the world is more uncertain, volatile and chaotic than it has ever been. Thirty years ago in 1989 I can recall Tom Peters[i] invoking, indeed goading, us to ‘thrive on chaos’ and how everything was moving at an exponential rate. Bennis…
Ethan Deviney was born without a cerebellum. The part of our brain that is found at the back of our head, where our skull curves down to meet our neck. It is a dense knot of brain tissue, which, while comprising only about a tenth of our brain’s volume, contains half of its cells. At…
Below is a short Remote Associates Test, or RAT, which is used to measure a person’s ability to see relationships between seemingly remote ideas and is an important part of the creative thinking process. For each set of three words, find a word that is related to all three. For example, if the words were…
Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter which side of the fence you sit on, we were all surprised by the outcome of the EU referendum and Trump’s election as US president. Since then, there has been plenty of dinner table and pub conversation about both outcomes and extensive economic analysis but what does it tell…
We are social animals. We have hunted and gathered in teams for most of our history. Beside the benefits of sharing the burden of survival and gaining insight, learning and knowledge, we also seek out teams for affection, affiliation, acknowledgement and personal self-worth. Even today, banishment or shunning is an important form of punishment in…
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said; Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. The 25th of October will be the 164th anniversary of one of the most famous (infamous?)…
“All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called ‘guessing what was at the other side of the hill.” Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. In warfare, business, and life in general we…
The literature on contemporary leadership and management is brimming with exhortations to learn and adapt. Laudable as this approach is, however, it is often flawed. First, in both business and public service, it is often based on an oversimplified understanding of learning, which confuses learning with training, ignoring the distinct value of education. Second, education…
Platform business models like Airbnb, Uber, and eBay are upending our conceptions of business, challenging the traditional linear business model as the only the only way of creating value. Today, how a business, public service or charity connects matters just as much as what it produces or provides. It’s imperative to remember that a platform is…
Two seemingly unrelated stories have struck me over the past month: the continuing saga of the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal and the publication of the report into the Grenfell Fire commissioned by Muslim Aid. For me, the thread connecting them is the threat and the opportunity posed to hierarchies in an increasingly complex and…
As our website makes clear, we are guided by an understanding that we live in a hyper connected world and that neural networks are like social networks. While brain activity is made possible through connecting neurons (brain cells), social activity is made possible through connecting individuals. Both are stimulated by new ideas and perspectives, which…
One of the hottest political issues is how ‘open versus closed’ has transcended ‘left versus right’ as the key political division. Those who are ‘open’, so the argument goes, are in favour of immigration and free trade, and those who are ‘closed’ are in favour of tighter border controls and protection for domestic industries. Alternatively,…
Leadership is sexy, management is boring. Yet how many of us have followed plausible and inspiring leaders who it turns out couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag and in the end, if we follow them at all, it is only out of sheer curiosity. Paradoxically, it is management, often regarded as a…
Let’s be clear, we are not talking here about networking for personal ends, collecting business cards, followers on social media, or belonging to a nepotistic old boy’s network of mutual back scratching. Sadly, the President’s Club is an example of networks gone badly wrong, where abhorrent behaviour, driven by the worst aspects of human social…
Informal networks of connection and control have always existed, but often only vaguely understood within tribal pecking orders, neat corporate hierarchies, and military chains of command. For networks to emerge as a new paradigm it needed a language of its own. A language that has been provided by the internet and social media. The question…
Trust is the confidence among team members that their peer’s intentions are good, and there is no need to be protective or careful around them. In essence, the team members are comfortable being vulnerable with one another in the conviction that their respective vulnerabilities will not be used against them, i.e. weaknesses, skill deficiencies,…
I can’t take the credit for this one and I’m not even sure who can. I found it recently on an untitled word document, among a pile of papers that I had obviously put to one side to read later. Well I’m glad I finally did read it and I commend it to you, and…
If management is the science of getting the right people, with the right things, in the right place, at the right time, in order to achieve the right effect, then leadership is the art of achieving more than the science of management says is possible. That is, when there aren’t enough people, money is tight…
No doubt you’ve heard it all before: the on-demand economy will exacerbate the trend toward enforced self-reliance that has been gathering pace since the 1970s. Each of us will have to master multiple skills and keep those skills up to date. We will need to take more responsibility for educating themselves, selling ourselves, through personal…
Despite what we know about networks and networking organisations still tend to be understood as simple, formal hierarchies, represented by an organisational chart or organogram. It is time to challenge this convenient fiction, which at best facilitates standard modes of production, handles easily anticipated problems, and illustrates linear reporting relationships. Crucially, it hides a far…
We can learn a great deal from good leadership but we can also learn from poor leadership. I’ve been fortunate to have experienced some really great leaders, but I’ve also suffered my fair share of real duffers. In a world that increasingly asks us to embrace change and inspire innovation I’ve nailed down my top…
I am a strong believer that, human nature being what it is, there is little new under the leadership and management sun. So in our September 2016 blog, I shared with you a selection of the leadership lessons from my naval hero Lord Nelson. This time, in the interests of balance, I thought it only…
We live in a networked world in which issues and problems, from global warming to terrorism and inequality, flow through webs of connection causing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). In this environment, people are beginning to question whether traditional leaders are up to the job. Equally, we are seeing the growing power of networks…
Innovation is critical in a knowledge economy, leading to new products, new methods and hopefully happy customers and organisational growth. According to PwC’s 2015 study on Global Innovation, U.S. companies spend $145 billion dollars on R&D each year. Yet, despite its importance, innovation is a difficult quality to cultivate both in individuals and in organizations.…
For the first blog of the New Year I’d like to reinvigorate an old idea. MBWA (Management by Walking Around) is rather taken for granted these days, as is often the case when a good idea becomes cliché. So to reinvigorate the importance of talking with your staff, I’d like to introduce MBTA, ‘Management by…
Virtual teams are increasingly a fact of organisational life, a part of our ever expanding socio-technical system. While many teams operate with ‘mixed modality’, part virtual part face to face, virtual teams can be defined as work groups which have some core members who interact primarily through electronic means and are engaged in interdependent tasks.…
Attempts at wholesale cultural change are costly, disruptive and unlikely to succeed. This is because culture rests upon long held ideas, customs, habits and attitudes, which have become the largely unexamined ‘way we do things around here’. A more fruitful approach is to identify and reinforce those behaviours that are congruent with your change programme…
Next month sees the 211th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar (21st October 1805), when twenty-seven British ships of the line, led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard HMS Victory, defeated a combined fleet of thirty-three French and Spanish ships off the southwest coast of Spain, just west of Cape Trafalgar. The Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two…
Whether you are taking on your first role as a manager, swatting up for a management position interview in a new business, or making the move from functional to general management, you will need to demonstrate that you understand the wider concerns of the business. As well as dealing with the day to day issues…
Are you struggling to change an individual, your team or your organisation to adopt a new way of doing things? The problem may be that you are trying to change their attitude, rather than focusing on their behaviour. Some years ago I spent time in Afghanistan, working to influence the Afghan population to support the…
The EU referendum offered voters a simple binary decision, ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’, an either/or answer to a hugely complex question. Neither was going to solve the problems we face in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, and either way a significant portion of the population were going to be dissatisfied with the answer.…
If a bat and ball costs £1.10 and the bat costs a pound more than the ball, how much does the ball cost? If the answer that jumps to mind is ten pence you are not alone, but you are wrong! Have another look (the answer is at the end of this post). The problem is…
Here’s a challenge for you and a colleague. Get yourselves a large piece of paper (a sheet from a flipchart or a broadsheet newspaper is ideal) and place it on the floor. Now, the challenge is for you both to stand on the paper, but without being able to touch one another. Sounds impossible, but…
Sheryl Sandberg famously advised women to ‘Lean In’. However, when dealing with difficult tasks and decisions women and men might be better advised to ‘Lean Back’. Research has revealed that people who are having trouble making decisions can benefit from creating some physical, and thereby psychological, distance between themselves and the problem. The researchers, Manoj…
I am an introvert. That doesn’t mean I’m shy or afraid of what people might think of me: I’ve spent my career standing up in front of people. It just means that I tend to get my energy from quiet time, when I recharge my batteries, and I like time to think and reflect. You…
Stakeholder engagement is one of the key aspects of management and inevitably leads to some difficult conversations. The reality of human behaviour means that stakeholders will not always appear to be fully rational and amenable. When this happens it is important to understand why they behave the way they do and, if necessary, persuade them…
Leadership development programmes fail for a number of reasons, but one common mistake is to underestimate people’s resistance to changing their beliefs or behaviour. The problem with change is that you are often asking people to let go of something well known and tangible in favour of something which may be completely alien and untried.…
This month I want to return to the topic of conversations, in particular the quality of conversations. In his book ‘Social Physics’ Alex Pentland relates the findings of his research into group intelligence. Surprisingly, the most important factor in predicting group intelligence was not group cohesion, motivation or satisfaction, but equality of conversational turn-taking. Groups…
In a former life I worked in a big multinational organisation, with colleagues from Europe, America and Australia. We got on very well and felt that we were an efficient and effective strategic planning team. On one occasion however, as we sat fervently agreeing with each other about the way forward, an American colleague raised…
In the run up to the Rugby World Cup I happen to have been doing a lot of work with teams. They have come from a variety of sectors but shared a common theme: grappling with changes to their structure at a time of considerable flux in their business environment. A not uncommon occurrence these…
Before becoming a consultant I spent 20 puzzled years in the military. Puzzled, because I was not a natural fit with the military. I was not a front-line soldier, I was an educator (a ‘schoolie’ in the Army vernacular) and spent much of my career teaching leadership and management, military history and international relations. This…
Sometimes, when delivering a session on leadership, I go back to basics and start by asking what are the traits or qualities of a leader. Among the usual suspects of integrity, determination, knowledge, courage etc. reference is normally made to charisma. When pressed, however, this turns out to be something indefinable that somehow makes others…
Why is it that two football teams whose players have similar abilities can perform very differently? Because performance depends not only on the quality of the single players, but on the relationships and interactions between them. In an organisational setting, poor informal relationships can make or break change, strangle innovation, and cripple day to day…
Leadership as Conversation A few years ago Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind suggested that ‘leadership is a conversation’ (HBR 2012). Given our belief in the centrality of the conversation, we naturally found this idea intriguing. In short, they questioned the top-down model of leadership in the face of globalisation, new technology and changes to the…
We give a lot of advice to clients about how to enhance their personal brand and get noticed by the people who matter. For us, this is all about the 3Ps: Presence, Posture and Profile. Presence is about getting noticed: Network – Develop your network and identify role models, advocates and mentors. Who are the…
Asking good questions starts with a clear understanding of what you want to know. Broadly speaking, do you want the facts or do you want someone’s opinion or judgement? Once you have the objective clearly in mind you need to ask questions that will quickly get you the best information available. In pursuit of that…
In January’s blog I wrote that PSA’s role is not to tell, but to ask useful questions that will ignite effective conversation. I would add that it is also our role to help leaders to ask those same questions. We agree with Ian Leslie, the author of ‘Curious’, that those with the ability to ask…
There are many websites and self-help books aimed at improving your social skills, turning you from hapless mumbler to magnetic raconteur, this is not one of them. For us, the conversation is not about the superficiality of making a good first impression or introducing yourself at parties. It is quite the opposite. It is about…
It’s Christmas, does your heart sink at the thought of interminable small talk with distant cousins and great aunts? If so, “Let us,” as Mark Twain suggested, “Make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.” By conversation I mean an interaction between two or more people, in…
‘The purpose of business is business’’ Milton Friedman (1962) In the last 20 years income inequality has risen with household wealth of the top 10 per cent of society now more than 100 times the wealth of the poorest 10 per cent; The major institutions, such as central government and banks have been found wanting;…
The sad fact is that in the UK and the developed world, we are slowly depopulating ourselves. Birth rates are falling whilst longevity increases; in 2006 there were more 55-64 year olds than 16-24 year olds for the first time. Whilst the ‘grey pound’ is a great opportunity for some businesses and the increasing need…
