Why do you remember some people and completely forget others? In February 2008 I ran some some sessions for a client at a site in Homebush in suburban Sydney. We were collecting examples from staff about engagement – examples about things that had motivated them or disengaged them. The examples were used to identify actions […]

What if a single warrior could have the knowledge of thousands? In the late 1990s, Nate Allen and Tony Burgess (both US Army Captains) sat on their back porches in Hawaii and swapped stories about their experiences as company commanders and pondered the question above. They had a vision about connecting all company commanders in […]

We have been keeping in touch with Kevin Bishop in the UK since running our Influencing Change workshops earlier in the year. A useful idea when trying to achieve change is to make the invisible visible. Kevin has just sent us an excellent example of this. One of the main issues in the United Kingdom […]

You know the feeling. You are waiting in a cafe for a meeting and its 10 minutes past the agreed time…am I in the right place, is it the right day? Well, that was me on Monday morning. About 15 minutes late, Carolyn Tate arrived. She explained that as she was leaving for the meeting […]

In late February and early March we ran workshops in Melbourne and Sydney with Kevin Bishop from the UK. The workshops focussed on Influencing Change using Stories. Until recently, Kevin was heading the change activities for 60,000 staff at the Royal Bank of Scotland. We learned heaps and the feedback from participants was fantastic. The […]

In late May 2009 I was invited to advise on change management on a big project in Sydney. The client was a medium size logistics organisation with a history of poor performance, low staff engagement and sub-standard customer service. They were in the midst of something of a crisis. They had been directed to substantially […]

Registered Post is reliable system for getting important items from one place to another, right? Well read on – you might re-think your answer. Last night Con and Faye, old friends from Queensland, came over for dinner. As is usual in these circumstances, the beer and wine flowed and the conversation was non-stop as we […]

This morning, Shawn and I compared recent airline lounge experiences. Mine went a like this On Monday morning I took my Mum to the airport for her flight back to Melbourne. We arrived at about 9.15 am – the airport was as quiet as I have seen it. We had 30 minutes before the flight […]

Today’s Australian Financial Review (p7) reports on the release of a study funded by the federal government. The report, titled ‘Management Matters in Australia: Just how productive are we?’ demonstrates what we know intuitively..that if a company can lift management performance, it will be a key factor in improving company financial performance. The report found […]

Here are some thoughts/experiences from last week regarding anecdotes, how to elicit them and story-telling Last Wednesday I listened to Alana, an Aboriginal lady, tell a traditional teaching story and we chatted afterwards. In organisations we generally see stories morph over time, with details changing but much of the meaning being retained. Alana explained that […]