Accelerating executive team performance
We must stop meeting like this
There is more than enough data: most meetings are dreadful. Organisations manage money and people yet do little to manage their most precious resource – time.
We looked at a wide range of evidence and advice to come up with 15 tips:
A Manifesto for Better Meetings.
Why top teams are so tough to tame – and what to do about it
Why executive teams are uniquely difficult – and often dysfunctional. Five themes for
accelerating teamwork and performance, based the best available research.
Teams aren’t what they used to be
Teams are more important than they ever were and changing fast. Leaders and HR teams are having to tear up the textbook and look at them, and invest in them, in new ways. In today’s unpredictable times, teams can become even more useful and important: they operate in more fluid, complex ways, manage ambiguity better and can use their diversity to reduce the danger of old habits and assumptions.
Leading in turbulent times
We are never going back to business as usual. Here are the lessons from Ernest
Shackleton’s failed but remarkable 1914 Antarctic expedition (among other sources). Five features of leadership for engaging people and succeeding in tough, unpredictable times.
Leadership in the era of economic uncertainty
Leadership in the era of economic uncertainty: new rules for getting things done in difficult times – summary of a book by Ram Charan. Charan’s big thoughts for how leaders can survive a ‘Tsunami’ and emerge smaller but stronger.
Leading for speed
Speed and agility are key to improving revenue, customer loyalty, market share and speed to market. Six ways to overcome the organisational barriers and build the capability for speed.
Leadership and emotion
“The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions”: Donald Calne, neuroscientist. A summary of the recent neuroscience and psychology on how to deliver effective leadership through emotion and challenge – but steering clear of fear.
Who is on your side? Is managing stakeholders the most valuable thing a leadership team can do?
In a world of damaged trust, we are more dependent than ever on the goodwill of others. The better connected the leadership to the rest of the world, the better the team performance. We look at four themes for leaders to think about and act on.
Managing your time in turbulent times: mission impossible?
As a leader you have all the assets at your disposal – except time. In tough periods it
becomes even more important to focus your time and energy on what really matters – in the areas where you can contribute most. Five practical steps plus tips from well-known CEOs.
Learn to be more of a monk?
Staying focused in a world with too many competing demands: the more senior you are the greater the scarcity of time and bandwidth. And the more it matters. We look at recent research and summarise the practical advice on how to manage this tension.
Mind games: learning from Jose Mourinho about improving team performance
What business can take from the approach of some football managers to unlock the creative and collaborative power of their teams by pushing much of the routine into habits. With practical tips to apply it in organisations.
Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes
Summary of a book by psychologist Maria Konnikova: it will probably not help you solve murders but will help you think, focus, remember and make decisions better. Holmes’ insights into the human mind rival his feats of criminal justice and is an ideal model for how we can think better than we usually do, as a matter of course.
Mindfulness – Why is it on the agenda for leaders at Unilever, Google, and the
House of Commons?
Mindfulness is everywhere – what was once the habit of Buddhists in mountain retreats is now being practiced in well-known companies, by CEOs at Davos, and on the trading floor in investment banks. Does mindfulness bring something new to how we improve our working life and performance? And what is it?