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Business Transformation

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Closed to new ideas

While doing my research for my upcoming lecture and workshops on Leadership, Intellectual Stimulation and its relationship with creating a culture of innovation and creativity in the workplace, I came across a video of a talk by John Cleese where, while referring to the work of Donald W. Mackinnon from the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research, University of California, Berkeley, he talks about people being in one of two states ‘open’ or ‘closed’. I just love it when I learn something so obvious that I ask myself ‘why haven’t I thought of it like that before?’  - Simon Sinek’s ‘Why, [...]

So, what is your Distrans?

Years ago, a well-respected and rich entrepreneur showed me around his new factory. In a back room a dozen people were analyzing customer requirements, doing complex calculations, and writing contracts. “Do you see these engineers?” the company owner giggled. “They write more in one day than I have written in my whole life! They are more interested in their paperwork than in what we are making in this company.” I have had similar experiences in other companies: a large furniture enterprise, a meat-processing company, an industrial bakery chain …. The owners all wanted me to first know and understand their [...]

Doing what you love

It is commonly known that I am motor racing fan, and take a special interest in McLaren. In a recent post showing their financial results for 2016, I noticed that they are celebrating their fourth consecutive year of profitability with a record 3,286 McLarens sold in 2016 and a 70 percent increase of profit before tax. This is just six years after selling their first car! So, what have McLaren got that has allowed them to achieve these results? Clearly, they have a loyal and fast growing customer base but how? Up until recently, I was always a Porsche 911 [...]

Sincerity

The new business buzzword in leadership coaching is ‘authenticity’. Apparently a great leader needs to be authentic.  It’s a good word when applied to a specific style of behaviour but it tells us very little. Authentic at work, authentic at home and authentic with friends. Authenticity is supposed to about ‘being yourself’. However, who are we? When I look back on my life, I don’t think I really knew who I was (certainly not in the work place) until I was in my late thirties. Finding oneself is much harder than many people think. I was speaking to a young [...]

The coffee machine is not working properly

I spend a lot of my time in business trying to get people to see the advantage of truly working together. A conversation at the coffee machine the other week, summed up nicely where I think there is room for improvement. “The coffee machine is not working properly. The screen says the cup is full but when I remove it, it is barely more than a third full.” Said my disgruntled colleague. “What do you think the problem is?” I asked, knowing him to be an engineer by training. “It’s definitely a hardware problem, that’s obvious”. He said. “I am [...]