Time For Re-Alignment 
It is never too early or late to kick-start and re-align the direction of your team to achieve the results that you deserve. Use this approach to discover how you can enjoy consistent improvement for the future.
Building A Culture Of Accountability
The key to building a culture of accountability, is to find a way to lead people without ruling them.
Five Signs That Your Culture's In Trouble
How do you determine if things are off-track and your culture is in trouble? Here are some clear signs.
Managing A Global Culture
A defining moment occurs when companies start to expand beyond their country's borders. At that point in time, they must ask themselves what doing business across borders will really mean to their company and, of course, to their people.
Opportunities For Innovation: Look For Widespread Frustrations
One of the major sources of real innovation opportunity, is a widespread activity combined with an observed frustration, very often expressed as a "curse".
Market Research For Innovation And Growth
Market research can provide you with answers to some of the questions that are crucial to your business success and arm you with the knowledge required for innovation and growth.
Creating A Culture Of Serving Your Employees
It's very uncomplicated really. If you put your employees first, your clients will feel as though they have been put first. That is the subtle translation of how great companies, who sincerely value their employees, become great partners to their clients and are the leaders in their field.
Move Your People From Operators To Opportunists
If you can move your people from operator to opportunists the outcome for the business will be extraordinary, and the risk in doing so is virtually non-existent.
Guess What I Just Heard ... Handling Gossip In The Workplace
Given that gossip is natural and will inevitably occur, how can leaders use this insight constructively?
10 Rules Of Brainstorming
Get the most from your brainstorming sessions with these 10 rules.
Simple Guidelines To Making Innovation Happen
These days most organisations have come to recognise the need for innovation, to be constantly moving their products, processes and services to an ever better place. So what underpins successful innovation?
Is Your Organisation "Generation Friendly"?
These guidelines give managers and staff alike a starting point for creating a generation friendly workplace.
The Innovation Imperative
No business is immune from competition and those that fail to observe new trends, spot opportunities and implement new technologies are destined to fall by the wayside.
10 Steps To Turning Your Company Into A Sustainability-Driven Innovator
Organisations that wish to grow profitably in the future must focus their efforts to benefit shareholders, society and the environment simultaneously.
Measuring The Benefits Of Corporate Responsibility
Corporate responsibility can no longer be viewed as a discretionary activity. Ethical behaviour goes hand in hand with reputation and to ignore its strategic implications is, at best, short-sighted.
Innovation And Thought Leadership - Essential To Success
Is there a way to use adversity itself to build a solid base for achievement - regardless of upturns or downturns? Yes. And this article will show you how it works.
Innovation - The Secret To Business Building
Business, best defined as "creating wealth through profitable transactions" is about selling products and services to generate profits. Businesses must grow to survive, for stagnation ultimately means oblivion.
Workplace Evolution: How Far Have You Progressed?
In the last 40 years the workplace has gone through a real evolution. So how far along the evolutionary trail would you say your organisation or industry is?
How To Spark Creativity In Meetings
People generally believe that creativity is a gift that a lucky few were born with. However, all people have a degree of creativity and they use it every day to work around problems.
Creating An Engaging Culture
Does your organisation have an engaging culture? Is it the kind of environment where people can thrive - or do you find that your new hires start out fully engaged, but over time, as they become ingrained in the culture, they lose their energy and start to resemble your less-than-engaged employees?
Tips For Preparing Your Business For Climate Change
The benefits of early action on climate change are reduced costs, improved public image and reduced impacts of future compliance requirements. As importantly, it will mean profits and growth, and gaining a competitive edge.
Create Culture To Deliver Results
There are two facets to a company accomplishing its business goals: the business strategy, and the organisational culture that supports it.
Creating A Generation Friendly Organisation
So you've realised there is something to the whole "generation revolution" going on in the workplace at the moment. Maybe you've already experienced some issues around attracting and retaining the best people from across the 4 generations. Now what? How do you move forward from here? How do you become more generation friendly?
How To Think Innovatively
Most of us are used to thinking in logical and rational ways - in fact our business demands it! So how do we go about thinking innovatively? Here are some simple innovation tools to bring new ideas into your business.
The Importance Of Corporate Social Responsibility For SMEs
Small to medium-sized enterprises account for about 90 percent of businesses worldwide and are responsible for 50-60 percent of employment. As such, they play a fundamental role in society and can potentially have a huge impact on social welfare.
The Second Key To A Remarkable Workplace - Principles
Living these unchanging principles in ever-changing ways is one of five keys essential to unlocking the door to your remarkable workplace.
Innovation – The Successful Implementation Of An Idea
There is massive confusion in the business marketplace concerning innovation. Many people I meet think innovation is being creative. Only a few people understand innovation is actually the successful implementation of an idea.
Getting The Story Right Is Telling For Change Success
Storytelling is a critical component of organisational transformation.
Taking Your Business To The Next Level
Taking your business to the next level can be done systematically and in a structured way that is not only low risk, but uses a process that can engage staff members at all levels of your business.
Seven Deadly Norms
It would be wrong to imply that destructive norms have taken over the business community. This is emphatically not the case. Unfortunately, there is no reliable way to quantify just how far ethically pernicious norms have spread.
Change Management
Many business owners will one day face the prospect of selling up, and they will have to tell their staff.
Innovation Circles - The Very Essence Of Success
Innovation, unlike some other disciplines, is not a black art or a special area of endeavour reserved only for the gifted. Innovation is in fact a rigorous pursuit that can be undertaken in a structured and systematic way. The task is simply to show people what that is.
How Can You Change The Corporate Culture?
A company's corporate culture is defined by its combined attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values. It's the ‘way things are done around here', to put it simply.
10 Steps To A Greener Workplace
Here are 10 tips that will significantly reduce the environmental footprint of a typical office without breaking the bank.
Why Organisational Change Fails
The following are some of the most common reasons I've identified why organisational change fails. You can use the list for diagnostic purposes, or to prevent mistakes in future attempts at change.
Leading Through Change
Paramount to your current and future business success is the calibre and performance of your staff, particularly in a period of rapid growth and change.
10 Values That Set A Business Apart From Its Competitors
Important business values that set a business apart from its competitors and attract staff easily include:
Innovation To Help Business Growth
If you encourage your staff to be innovative in their work practices and nurture any ideas they have, you will be creating an innovative "culture". This will allow your business a better chance to grow, prosper and be competitive.
Uncovering The Real Cause Of Generational Conflict
By taking the time to understand each generation and get to the real cause of conflict, I believe we can reduce the amount of conflict we see at work.
16 Ways To Bring Fun To Your Workplace
This list is provided with two suggestions:
Suggest them - don't impose them. Staff will only really participate when they take the initiative and think of the ideas themselves. If this list serves to start things moving, it's done its job.
Some of these ideas are very silly... feel free to modify to suit your organisation's culture.
Innovate Using Outside-In Thinking
Do you know your customer? Do you REALLY know your customer?
Take Any Two From Four...
You can make whatever you do cheap, quick, innovative, or good, but you can only have two of the four at one time. Think about it. I'll wager you will come up with lots of further examples of this "law" from your own experience.
If Actions Speak Louder Than Words... What Do Yours Say?
There are many reasons put forward to explain why change is so hard to initiate and so difficult to implement. Perhaps an exploration of what has been proposed as the 1/9/90 Law for blogging can throw more light on the phenomenon.
Six Things You Must Do To Become An Effective Leader In The Midst Of Change
All progress is the result of change. But not all change is progress. Some changes don't make any sense. In fact, some leadership behaviours actually create more stress for yourself and your co-workers. So what works?
The ABC Of Cultural Change
Productive cultural change can be achieved in your organisation by following these principles.
Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone!
When was the last time you thought about taking your business to new and heady heights, but didn't actually get any further?
Brain Racer!
How to be on when it's needed, and off when you're home.
Win For You, Win For Me
Assessing a corporation's performance may become easier with the introduction of a less complex sustainable balanced scorecard with a single indicator outcome.
Innovation: Does It Really Pay?
Yes it does. In fact, innovative companies lead in every way. They have well-managed workplaces. And their return on shareholder funds is superior.
Conflict Is Good
While unbridled anger and petty politics have no place in the boardroom or the office, conflict does. Controlled conflict that is, for it allows an exchange of different ideas and the addressing of competing interests.
Choosing A Worthy Cause
It is good business to give to worthy causes.
Ten Ways To Stimulate Creativity
We are often searching for creative solutions to the day-to-day problems of running a business. Creativity can simply be seeing a problem in a brand new light, finding a brand new opportunity, resolving an issue or finding an often unlooked for answer or idea.
Working On Loyalty
The statement "there's no loyalty today" is so common in business these days, especially from older workers. And maybe because it has been heard so often, some organisations are reacting as though it is just a fact of life and nothing can be done about it.
Innovation - Driving Business Growth
It is one thing to understand how to grow your business - with some planning and foresight this is achievable but it is another to understand how to take your business from being good, to being great.
New Lean Thinking
One often hears the comment that "there's nothing new in management", and this perception, real or not, can be the cause of lack of engagement in change projects.
Managing Diversity
Businesses are increasingly under pressure to remain globally competitive. To secure success, decision-makers must recognise the need for fundamental change in organisational structure, management of diverse workforces and corporate culture.
Resistance To Change
Transformational changes to "doing more with less" in organisations have been rapid, recurrent and structural. Many failures in these changes are due to employees' resistance, but this resistance can be changed into acceptance with skillful, sensitive employee-focused management.
Profit And Benefits From Planning For Sustainability
Change happens so fast now that no organisation can be profitable and sustainable in the long-term unless it ensures that it makes a positive contribution to the world of the future.
Change Management: Three Essential Ingredients For Success
Creating an article on managing change in today's business environment requires caution, as change comes in so many guises. However, I find the ideas provided here are sound guidelines for most situations I have encountered. I hope there is value to you in my sharing them with you.
Habits Versus Comfort
I've been told that a new habit takes 28 days of consistently performing the new task to create.
Becoming An Employer Of Choice
Open communication through feedback.
5 Innovation ThinkModes
Stuck in a mental rut? No storm in your brainstorming sessions? Try these ThinkModes on for size.
Value-stifling Bureaucracy
With every project, there are two broad focuses: value creation and project administration. Many businesses often sacrifice significant value creation in preference of placating the internal process auditor!
Creating Positive Change - There Is No Beginning Too Small
In the course of developing The Global Fund for Women, I came to know that the way an organisation does its work is more important than what it does. I also learned that there can be some definable steps toward effecting change.
Tapping The Inner Riches Of Your Team
Wayne Dyer said it well. Our outlook is all wrong. We're constantly looking outward for the answers to our questions and solutions to our problems.
Business Turnaround And Renewal
Here’s the punch line: think of corporate renewal as proactive business turnaround.
The Role Of Positive Workplace Training And Education
The hidden health and safety epidemic in Australia and what to do about it.
Innovation Unbound
Company leaders must actively choose a philosophy of innovation that helps everyone in the organisation understand how to get beyond the obstacles to success.
Shaping A High Performance Culture - What Works & What Doesn't
What is it that makes your organisation effective? Is it strategy? Structure? Process? Or, could it be something deeper: your company's culture?
Conditions For Successful Change
A few years ago I was given a useful definition of insanity: "Doing what you did yesterday and expecting a different outcome."
Convert Ideas Into Growth
Ideation is the flow of ideas that can be converted into growth on a consistent basis.
Creating Value Based On Our Values
Many organisations have a list of values, often highlighted in fancy frames on foyer walls. It seems only a small percentage of workplaces have shared definitions of their values and even less have determined the behaviours that can be measured in order to ensure the day to day living of values.
Why Change Goes Wrong And What You Can Do About It
Change is made more difficult if we don’t have the right skills to deal with it. There needs to be a fine balance between the level of change and our skills in coping with change in order for it to be successful.
Why You Should Encourage Resistance To Change
Ask a group of managers what they fear most about implementing a change program and they will probably respond with “resistance from employees”. It seems resistance is a big issue. For some reason we get it in our heads that resistance is a bad thing ... something to be avoided at all costs. “If you do it right they won’t resist” is what many managers are thinking.
The Balanced Scorecard And Change Management
What is the balanced scorecard? Why should we use one? Failure to definitively answer basic questions like these is negatively impacting companies' success with scorecard implementations.
Re-Innovate Your Innovation
If you want more innovation, you've got to innovate your innovation system.
The Formula For Innovation: What Competencies Are Vital Ingredients?
Let's assume that your business decides to pursue a strategy of innovation. Is there a formula to determine what kinds of people you will need to attract, hire, develop and retain in order to make sure that you can succeed in being innovative?
Emotional Intelligence, Innovation And Creativity
Emotional Intelligence: For a while it was regarded as just another fad, new age organisational psycho-spin that wouldn’t last. Surely, this can’t be the dawn of the era of the ‘touchy-feely’ boardroom?
Corporate Ethics, Corporate Culture and Corporate Image - Today’s Key Managerial Issues
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and HIH Insurance executives in jail. These are the headlines and the key business stories of today. Aggressive accounting procedures. Corporate governance. Business honesty. Corporate reputations being destroyed. Share prices dropping at the first hint of any financial shenanigans. These are the topics that keep Board Directors awake at night. And they all relate to one critical management subject - the Corporate Image.
Setting Sail For Change
Executives facing a seemingly constant stream of complex change, may wish for a set of procedures and rules - a map which will guide them in unknown territory. We argue that although such a map may be unrealistic given the complexities of organisational change, critical guidance is possible and that through recognition and robust analysis of key intelligence areas, managers can significantly enhance their change leadership capabilities.
Do Talk To Strangers: Encouraging Performative Ties To Create Competitive Advantage
What gives firms competitive advantage isn't just their repository of sheer knowledge, but their use and encouragement of so-called "performative ties" - those impromptu communications made by colleagues who are strangers in which critical knowledge is transferred. While many companies have the potential to realise competitive advantage by creating and transferring knowledge more efficiently across employees, few know how to do it successfully.
Principled Communication
Since the publication of my book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I have worked with many wonderful individuals who are seeking to improve the quality of their communications, relationships, products, services, organisations and lives. But sadly, I see many people using a variety of ill-advised approaches. In effect, they try to apply short-cut, manipulative practices learned in academic and social systems to natural systems, the "farms" of their lives.
What’s Your Company Culture?
Successful organisations of the future will be the ones that can create a positive workplace culture that attracts like minded people. If you can get the right people in your organisation a positive culture will naturally flourish.
The Culture Change Program
The vast majority of culture change programmes just fade out after a while. This phenomena is known as the Okavanga-Kalahari syndrome. There are ways to overcome this.
Focus On Technology Misses The Mark
There is almost an obsessive focus on the technology revolution and the impact it is having on people in the workplace. Much of this misses the most critical issue and may well be the reason many change initiatives fail to achieve the anticipated benefits.
The Ten Easy Steps To Increase Your Confidence, Creativity And Cash In The Attention Economy
How can you be more creative? How can you turn creative ideas into cash. How can you motivate and inspire others to be more creative? There's a saying that locked inside every person is a 'million dollar idea' waiting to happen. How can you turn these ideas into reality? This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to get started, revitalize or have a fresh look at how to turn your creative ideas into cash.
Business Models: Cautionary Tales
In the volatile new economy, responding to market changes with the wrong business model can be fatal. But it happens all the time. Here are 10 traps to avoid.
Creating A Culture Of Organisational Customer Service
So who are your customers, really? As leaders, whatever the business we are in, we are all aware - or should be - of the importance of customer service to the success of the business. Not only does the way your individual customer receive the service impact on their desire to do business with you again but the very nature of customer service is such that it is critical to your business success.
Why An Internal Communication Strategy Is Critical To Businesses
If you have an internal communication strategy in place in your workplace, one that is transparent and open, this not only displays your sound management integrity but is a pro-active approach to building a culture of better directed, more committed and efficient employees.
Successful Project Execution - A Users' Guide
From an etymological perspective,“execution” refers to following up on a decision, or transforming an idea into reality. Up to that point, ideas are only dreams. From then on, they become reality, with consequences. The results are up to us.
Synergy From Individual Differences: Map, Bridge and Integrate (MBI)
Many conflict situations arise from miscommunication between people who have different ways of seeing the same thing.
Conflict - How To Prevent A Workplace Battleground
Can you honestly say that your workplace is totally free of disagreements, confrontations and conflicts.
Understanding Employees Reaction To Change
Managers often make the mistake of assuming that once a change is started, that employees will see that it is going to take place, and get on side. This is rarely the case.
Five Business Model Myths That Hold Companies Back
Despite their dot.com indiscretions, venture capitalists have done the business community a favor. They taught us to pay attention to business models. Some traditional firms have been sleeping in class, however. You'll want to understand five business model myths that hold companies back in order to master the art of fluid change.
Uncompromising Leadership - How To Combine Speed And Commitment To Drive Change
Job one for a business leader is to improve business performance by executing change and by exploiting emerging opportunities for growth. But change has its downsides, like resistance from management and line employees. To avoid these common hurdles, while realizing gains in business performance, focus on four overlapping implementation strategies.
Business Literacy And Project Management
No matter how much desire you have for change and innovation, if you don't develop the capacity of people's business literacy and project management, you will be spinning your wheels.
Innovation - More To It Than Meets The Eye
Most business managers say they want their people to be more innovative and that they need ‘more innovation’ in their organisations. ‘Innovation’ also crops up regularly in corporate values and mission statements. The problem is, many managers don’t really understand what innovation is. And often, when they get it, they really don’t want it because they can’t cope with it.
Managing Conflict Resolution Within Your Business
Now more than ever before, corporate life is changing. As part of everyday work, managers must deal with a range of conflicts within their organization and outside it.
Change - Or Else!
Change in life and in business is inevitable. Resisting is as futile as it is frustrating. Success in business is often determined by how effective an organisation manages change. The need for change is increasing and organisations must be capable of effective change in order to succeed in the future.
Foundations Of Success
Ever considered why successful people are successful or how successful businesses achieve their success? There are a number of common beliefs amongst successful people and organisations, and one of them certainly is that the only constant is change. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to change being made just for the sake of change and without the right foundation.
A Great Workplace Culture Is Foundational To Success
In the past 14 years I have been privileged to work with several organisations that have embraced and succeeded at transforming workplace culture from the dark ages to one that is uplifting for the human spirit, the essential in my view for optimum performance to occur on a consistent basis.
How And Why You Should 'Tell It Like It Is'
Communicating to staff during any organisational change, restructure or merger is tough. Senior managers can lose touch with front-line issues or be fearful of communicating with their staff until they have "all the answers."
Campfires Of Knowledge
Campfires conjure up warm, safe places where story telling, camaraderie, frank conversation, and knowledge sharing can flow. Alastair Rylatt explains why igniting similarly safe spaces in the workplace is an essential management skill.
Managing Change Without Conflict And Disruption
Change is inevitable but is often difficult to introduce to staff in the workplace. Exactly what you say and how you say it can make a major impact on how change is handled in your company.
Workplace Conflict Exposed
It’s all a matter of whether you work with turtles, sharks, teddy bears, foxes or owls! Why is it important to be able to identify the different personality styles in your workplace, or for that matter, your own? Identifying the turtles, sharks, teddy bears, foxes or owls in your business puts you in a better position to make positive use of individual personalities and turn workplace conflict around.
Encourage Staff To Be 'Risk Managers' And Reap The Benefits Of Their Creativity.
Encouraging staff to take courageous decisions and become 'risk managers' rather than 'risk evaders' will create a work climate that is open to innovation.
Cultural Fit - The New Measure Of CEOs
The values of our corporate leaders are under the spotlight once again, with Xerox recently admitting to inflated sales figures and the impending bankruptcy of WorldCom, the telecommunications giant facing serious fraud charges.
CEO’s Chasing The Wrong Gods Of Management
Survey data collected from more than 700 major Australian organisations shows 90% of Australians work in a negative culture of blame, indecision and conformity.
Creativity In Business
One of the main problems in business today is that there are too many ideas, not too few. Dozens of solutions appear and disappear in chaotic piles of data, crowds of experts’ opinion and a jumble of contradictory statistics and reports on every aspect of every issue.
Starting A Business Within A Business
In today’s marketplace, innovation, creativity, and flexibility are the watchwords for companies that hope to survive and prosper. But how can you help your firm create and develop new ideas that respond to customer’s changing needs?
Building Employee Trust
As we have learned throughout history, success in carrying-out a corporation’s strategy is significantly affected by the culture of the organization and the effect it has on developing and maintaining levels of intensity and dedication among employees. How then do strong culture organizations develop intensity and commitment?
Innovation At Ground Zero
In today’s rapidly changing world, entrepreneurs and executives must create a "culture of innovation" that increases performance and output throughout the organization.
Developing A SWAT Team, With A SWOT Mentality
What sorts of shift do we have to have our people make, to move to a more 'adaptive', change stance?
Getting Better At Doing Organisational Change
After having worked on a role play about organisational change with over 100 members of The CEO Institute, there seems to be some common lessons about tackling change.
Innovation and Culture
Are they two sides of the same coin?