If we apporoach skills as a critical lever in the transformation agenda? This offers a new paradigm would start with senior leaders answering the question what skills does the organization need to achieve our aspirations? The identified skills would be those that underpin performance, and any capability gaps that need to be bridged in order to accelerate to the aspiration.
http://www.peterfuda.com/2015/03/19/skills-are-an-under-utilised-lever-for-enabling-transformation/
Yes, we all hate meetings. Yes, they are usually a waste of time. And yes, they’re here to stay. So it’s your responsibility as a leader to make them better. This doesn’t mean just make them shorter, more efficient, more organized. People need to enjoy them and, dare I say it, have fun.
This report gathers together leading experts from the health world to set out their views on what needs to change to ensure the long-term sustainability of the NHS. With the challenges of austerity, an ageing society and more expensive treatment the authors add their thoughts to the on-going debate on prevention, integration and funding.
https://smithinstitutethinktank.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/healthcare-the-next-five-years.pdf
To grow and innovate, organizations have to come up with creative ideas. At the employee level, creativity results from a combination of expertise, motivation, and thinking skills. At the team level, it results from the synergy between team members, which allows the group to produce something greater than the sum of its parts.
The most widely used method to spark group creativity is brainstorming, a technique first introduced by Alex Osborn, a real life “Mad Man,” in the 1950s. Brainstorming is based on four rules:
The process, which should be informal and unstructured, is based on two old psychological premises. First, that the mere presence of others can have motivating effects on an individual’s performance. Second, that quantity (eventually) leads to quality.
https://hbr.org/2015/03/why-group-brainstorming-is-a-waste-of-time
When email was novel 20 years ago, managers began asking us if it should be used for sensitive conversations, such as performance problems or salary negotiations. For years we said “no way.” But as work became more and more virtual, the question changed. People no longer asked, “Should I?” Instead, they demanded, “How can I?”
https://hbr.org/2015/03/you-can-have-constructive-conflict-over-email
In an unpredictable world, executives should stretch beyond managing the probable.
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/managing_in_uncertainty/delighting_in_the_possible
You may have played the game of “telephone” as a child. Your teacher sat the class in a circle and whispered a sentence to the first kid, who whispered it to his neighbor, and so on until the last child in the circle told the group what she thought she heard. Inevitably, this final sentence was markedly different from the original and was usually also wildly incorrect (hence the hilarity of the game).
This distortion is due to a concept called cumulative error. Organizations fall victim to the same phenomenon in innovation. When implementing new customer offerings and experiences, an original idea is often inadvertently manipulated as it moves through development. The game here is called “silos,” and it too results in cumulative error. A new concept is developed and, when ready for execution, is passed from department to department in a process not much different from “telephone”: a number of individuals, each tasked with sharing and repeating a phrase, will invariably distort it slightly as it moves along.
https://hbr.org/2015/03/innovate-without-diluting-your-core-idea
It takes just a quick glance, maybe three seconds, for someone to evaluate you when you meet for the first time. In this short time, the other person forms an opinion about you based on your appearance, your body language, your demeanor, your mannerisms, and how you are dressed.
With every new encounter, you are evaluated and yet another person’s impression of you is formed. These first impression can be nearly impossible to reverse or undo, making those first encounters extremely important, for they set the tone for all the relationships that follows.
So, whether they are in your career or social life, it’s important to know how to create a good first impression. This article provides some useful tips to help you do this.
Studies find that introverts make up one-third to one-half of the population. Yet most workplaces are set up exclusively with extroverts in mind, a fact that becomes clear when you look at traits associated with the two personality types.
https://hbr.org/2015/03/introverts-extroverts-and-the-complexities-of-team-dynamics
No one grows as a leader without the support of other people. Effective peer-to-peer coaching can offer the encouragement people need to overcome the fear of starting something new. Peer coaches, like professional coaches, can also hold their “clients” accountable for moving in a new direction.
https://hbr.org/2015/03/how-to-get-your-team-to-coach-each-other