As you’d expect, we keep an eye on the cultural challenges we encounter in the organisations we support. Currently, we are tracking more than a dozen common issues, regardless of geography or business vertical. These are the top four. Nice to know you are not alone.
At the end of the day we help you to create a culture where employees contribute more than their contracted minimum. We call this Discretionary Effort.
The Partners We Trust
What’s more important for success – IQ or EQ? Do you need one or both; and what’s the right mix? There’s no doubt that leaders, managers and employees are all being judged by a new yardstick. Not just by how smart we are, our training qualifications or years of experience. Increasingly it’s about how well we handle ourselves and other people. Until quite recently people used to think intelligence was just about IQ.
What’s more important for success – IQ or EQ? Do you need one or both; and what’s the right mix? There’s no doubt that leaders, managers and employees are all being judged by a new yardstick. Not just by how smart we are, our training qualifications or years of experience. Increasingly it’s about how well we handle ourselves and other people. Until quite recently people used to think intelligence was just about IQ.
Does it sometimes feel that your business is fuelled more by optimism than reality? Do your colleagues tell you that customers are happy or (as in the case of a business I once encountered) that ‘no one’s complained yet’? Without putting a damper on things, there’s a very effective exercise you can run to perform a reality check on a big customer or a strategic project. We called it ‘Why did we lose the client?
Modern businesses invest time and expertise in shaping future strategies. Many go on to invest effort in communicating the chosen direction to employees. But often, when you talk to an individual staff member, team or department, you find they’re unaware of the strategy and clueless as to how they can help the organisation achieve it. People turn up to do their daily work but don’t much care about the broader outcome.
In work and life, we prize the ability to think quickly. We use the complimentary term ‘agile’ to describe someone who can handle a tough Q&A session. Or ‘sharp’ for an entrepreneur who spots and seizes a business opportunity before anyone else. But, in ascribing quick thinking to intellect, we are generally mistaken. When we make decisions, our brains use two systems. Let’s call them fast and slow.