Just Seven Things

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Archive for the category “Business”

01 Jun 2009
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A Personal Conflict: Handling the Stress of Business Growth with the Demands of Leadership

A very personal conflict reflected in recent 360 feedback I received from my managers and fellow directors is well covered in Harvard Business Review’s June 2009 leader: How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy

Robert Sutton found that people placed in authority become less mindful of others’ feelings and needs whilst those in subordinate positions devote immense energy to watching and interpreting the actions of leaders.

He suggests a useful framework to get bosses focused on what their people need from them: predictability, understanding, control and compassion.

1. Predictability: as much information as you can. Preparation reduces suffering and they can relax in the meantime

2. Understanding: explain why changes are necessary, and how it will affect routines. Internal communication should be simple, concrete and repetitive

3. Control: don’t frame an obstacle as too big, too complex, or too difficult to overcome: people will be overwhelmed and will freeze in their tracks. Break down into less daunting components

4. Compassion: tend to peoples’ emotional needs, however hard you are finding the process as a leader

Posted in Business, Change, Communication, Control, Leadership and tagged , ,
04 May 2009
4 Comments

Creativity and the Business Brain (and Why Most of Us Should be Sacked)

Thinking Out of the Box by Svilen Mushkatov

Thinking Out of the Box by Svilen Mushkatov

Your position of responsibility gives you the stress of deadlines, targets and deliverables. The development of your people, your management responsibilities and your career development weigh heavily on you. Continuing professional development, business/ competitor intelligence and your near-term product and service evolution/ development nag away at the peripheries of your to-do list and stress consciousness.

The environment in which you and your business is operating, the competitive threats and the strategic developments that you should be plotting and planning in response seem like things that are always on next week or month’s agenda.

The reality – when you make the time – is that your your day to day responsibilities drown your brain space and creativity. Like digging a hole in the sand on the shoreline, as quickly as you try and dig out the brain space, the sea water of your hard deadlines, actions and targets fills the hole. Even if you adopt a disciplined approach to your time you often get to the allotted slot for your creativity and…….. nothing…… you’re not in a creative place or mindset, nothing flows. Or even if it does, it’s a long time coming and you’re vaguely aware afterwards that there was a lot more to come if only you’d been in the right mindset.

If you’re practiced at being creative, inventive, innovative and lateral then you’ll recognise the mind set you need. You’ll know what state you need to be in to originally produce and generate new thought or ideas. You may only know this hazily through a series of post-event analyses of your most creative moments. Or this may be the first time you’ve really thought about it all that deeply. But hazily is the key, and at the heart of the dichotomy of managing creativity in business (to be clear, I’m not talking here about managing creative teams, but the extension in thinking and reasoning should be fairly obvious by the end of this post) Read more…

Posted in Action Orientation, Business, Conscious and Unconscious, Creativity, Neuroscience and tagged , , ,
14 Oct 2008

The Experience Economy: Possessions vs. Experience Now

Not the usual subject matter, but a quick thought.

Ben Elliot of concierge company ‘Quintessentially’ is quoted as saying, ‘people realise experiences are remembered more than purchases. What you hold in your heart is more important than what you hold in your hand’

This was quoted in the FT in a piece on possessions. A book called the Experience Economy was also referred to. 

I wonder, in light of the events over the past weeks and months, what the impact on corporations and their products will be? Will our internal valuation of things vs. experience have shifted? Will experience increase in value?

Just a thought…..

 

Posted in Business, Change, Conscious and Unconscious, Happiness and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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