We need both divergent thinking (generating a wide range of views, ideas or possibilities) & convergent thinking (evaluating, comparing & narrowing down choices) if we want to find better solutions. Too often, we leave out the divergent phase altogether or we don't involve enough

Many people in health & care have been inspired by the book 'Radical Candor'. The author, Kim Scott has recently published a second book: 'Radical Respect'. This kind of respect is something we owe to everyone - not something that needs to be “earned.” It means having regard

In my many years as a leader of change, I have participated in some brilliant workshops & some terrible ones. A key issue is workshop design. I've come to understand that workshop design is more important than facilitation. If we take a systems view of the event, there are many

What should we do to influence large groups of people to change their behaviour? The most comprehensive synthesis of studies on behaviour change ever undertaken has been published & offers some clear steers:
1) For behaviour change at an individual level:
- giving accurate

As leaders, we are told to 'start with why' because purpose is critical: if we create & commit to a profound purpose, a whole host of engagement, performance & outcome benefits will result.
However, purpose isn't enough. People constantly engage in meaning-making at work &

Making change happen across a system of different organisations & groups is different to managing change within a single organisation. Collaborate is a great source for approaches to system change. They use the term 'system activist' rather than 'system leader', as mobilising

The spectrum of causes of failure from Amy Edmondson. To repeat Amy’s question: how many failures that should be categorised as praiseworthy get treated as blameworthy by those who matter?

Most leadership development in the health & care sector is focussed on supporting individual leaders to develop their personal skills. It's a positive thing AND, in a world that increasingly needs to be based on collaborative leadership, we also need to shift much of the focus to

Team 'scaling fallacy': The mistaken belief that by expanding the size of a team we will get more work done, more speedily. Leaders are often too optimistic about the impact on project costs & outcomes because we overestimate the value of adding team members while

Change & reorganisation, unless thoughtfully & sensitively managed, are more likely to bring turmoil, uncertainty, a lack of control, a sense of unbelonging & a loss of meaning, than measurable improvement. In a new book, Ashley Goodall says that leaders must first create a

If we want to build learning organisations, we need a data-driven culture. Yet in a recent study across multiple industries, 6 in 10 leaders said they haven’t been able to establish a data-driven culture. It's mostly not to do with (technical) data systems. It's to do with people

Previous research (eg, Amabile & Kramer 2011) has shown that a sense of making progress is one of the most powerful motivators for people at work. So I'm not surprised that this newly published data indicates that people who set more goals not only perform better but feel better

Continuing with posts about models/approaches that have a big impact on my current change practice. This is from Mary Uhl-Bien. For future viability, organisations need all three of the following:
1) Operational leadership to deliver today’s results & loosen up the operational

I have been asked about models & approaches that influence my change practice. I will post some of them over the next few days. The first shows the distinction between 'change-in-kind' (disruptive, discontinuous change) as well as 'change-in degree' (incremental, continuous

We need everyone to be creative & innovative at work if we want to fundamentally improve the way we do things. However, many people find that when they generate novel ideas, they're discouraged or not supported to put their ideas into practice by their managers. New research

A further graphic that makes the powerful point that we have to think differently about 'failure' if we want to build psychological safety for high performance in our teams & organisations. It's inspired by Amy Edmondson. The ideas are further developed in her latest book 'Right