This is not how it was supposed to be. You don’t feel the way you want to be feeling. You are not enjoying the role anymore. You’ve been in this job for a while and it has never felt as bad as it does now. You’ve always been told you are a ‘people’s person’, and […]
High hopes…! Susannah is a well-qualified, experienced project manager in her early forties. Her CV shows she has a successful twelve-year track record managing IT projects with several well-known global companies. For ExCel_ITO Limited Susannah seemed to be a perfect fit for running a dispersed, cross-functional, multi-cultural project team focused on the development and introduction […]
Many of us have experience or awareness of psychometric testing and what it seeks to achieve. My first ‘psychometric’ experience in the late 1980’s was without doubt rudimentary. This short story is about a very different experience in 1992 driven by a visionary Personnel Director in a British Telecom subsidiary…..yes BT…. but it was a […]
Tuning your brain – consider natural ‘wiring’ when hiring……! David Eagleman is one of my favourite neuroscientists. This is because he makes his discipline not just fascinating but eminently accessible. In the following two-minute video he outlines why, as babies, we remain helpless and dependent longer than the young of any other species on the […]
All aboard the ‘Change Express’ We recently had the good fortune to work with a very forward-thinking CEO of a small IT software firm that was about five years into its life and had just secured a new investor. Strategically he was about to embark on a path of significant and fast expansion. In contemplating […]
I was in Astana recently working on strategy with board directors of Kazakhstan state industries. What a wonderfully iconoclastic place Astana is. A fantastically modern, 21st century city in the middle of the steppes and hundreds of kilometres from anywhere! Bizarre but impressive and a highly enjoyable visit. Just as enjoyable was my stay at […]
The following story bears comparison with the underlying reality of modern-day recruitment especially with respect to selection and high performance. “Hello sailor…” I joined the Merchant Navy and went to sea shortly after my eighteenth birthday. The interesting thing about the seagoing career was that once you were ‘certificated’ (qualified) shipping companies did little or […]
A new approach to selection Question: How do you create a consistently successful team in sport? Answer: You select your athletes brilliantly for the right attitudes then develop their skills with passion! Question: How do most organisations believe you create successful performance? Answer: You focus your selection on the leaders and their traits! ……..In this […]
Part 1: Why is it difficult to deliver high performance in organisations? “People make the place” (Schneider 1987). Organisations struggle to deliver high performance not because their leaders are bad, but because they do not often have the right people in the middle. Right people – meaning those demonstrating behaviours, dispositions, inclinations that fit the […]
“People need frames not cages” (Ryle, “Frames and cages”1975) When we try to predict behaviours of others, we often find it helpful to use ‘mental shortcuts’. Our brains feel quite happy when we ‘know’ someone is an ‘extrovert’ or a ‘narcissist’. We understand the concept, the ‘pattern’, and thus know what to expect of a […]
What’s behind the stunning success of the small motivated army surrounded by bigger enemies, resembling the military image of mythical David against Goliath? The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is considered to be one of the best fighting forces on earth (Forbes, August 2014) and the world’s fourth most powerful army. It has effectively been at […]
