Blog
The Fog of Misalignment
Read about The Fog in organizations and why it’s relevant to performance.
Quick Read – The Illusion of Pride
Fascinating stuff: pride doesn't seem to connect much with confidence or positivity. The nature of pride and how it can sit in contradiction to other emotions showed up in our recent work on organizational alignment. The methodology we use involves assessing the...
Why Internal Comms is Disengaging Employees and What You Can Do About It
Recently, I was invited to join a podcast on the future of Internal Communications. It inspired this article, in which I share my views more fully. A lot of people won't like this but I'm just going to say it straight. But first, as a reminder: Posting / announcing...
When Culture Changes Take Minutes
We've all seen it: people behaving in one way in one setting, then behaving very differently in another setting. For example, in a formal meeting with top level leaders - a manager is well-prepared, considered, respectful, agreeable, even guarded. Once out of the...
Every team is unique but we are starting to see patterns!
Alignment - or specifically, misalignment - is one of the biggest barriers to business performance today. Strategies and initiatives fail because of it, yet many can’t find the tools to diagnose and address it. It's fascinating to discover that there usually is a...
If you think you’ve got your finger on the pulse, think again.
When a situation is so complex that someone has to have their 'finger on the pulse' to know what's going on - human judgement just doesn't cut it. That's because 'gut-feel' generalizations of what other people are thinking and feeling are inevitably tainted. They're...
Awareness of ‘what is’, is what we do.
The ultimate competitive advantage is popularity. That comes from a strong mental connections between the people you want to influence and their experience of your brand. A crucial part of making that connection is how your whole organization delivers on the brand...
Reverse Communications: Closing the Alignment Gaps
Top managers often rely on mass communication channels to persuade the rank and file to embrace whatever has been concocted in the boardroom. The underlying assumption being that ‘smart communication’ will create the necessary awareness, understanding and enthusiasm...
The Emperor’s New Strategy – PART 2
See Part 1 here Finally, Henry’s day has come. He is the CEO of a global organization and is ready to reveal the new, long-awaited Strategy. Metaphorically speaking, it is a fine Cloak a made of red velvet, gold trim, and sparkly gold sequins. The company is called...
The Emperor’s New Strategy – PART 1
This is a story about two different strategy communication approaches. The first part is a tale about how old-fashioned traditional strategy communications can break an organization. The second tells the story about how great strategy communications can make an...
Professional vs Human
In my experience, when you bring your whole self to work, business is personal. And if you can express your emotions with others constructively, being personal in business is more useful and therefore also more professional.
Why ‘top down’ is such a hard habit to break
I recently participated in a conference and spotted an underlying theme in the content and discussions about employee communications that surprised me. It was about 'needing them to do or see something differently', expressed in ways like this: “We have to motivate...
Four approaches to improving the effectiveness of people at work: Inner Transformation, Values, Behaviours, Team Alignment
Four approaches to improving the effectiveness of people at work
Why relationship building in business isn’t about the relationship
I feel we need some clarity here: relationship building in a business context isn’t about the relationship, it’s about being able to pull in the same direction for the sake of advancing shared interests. Why is this important? Because if it’s about the relationship...
Framing and aligning – straightening out employee communications
Back to where employee communications began In my humble opinion, the management of employee communications was faulted from the start. As a spin-off from public relations activities in the 1980's, it all began when employees became categorized as an 'audience'....
‘Whole systems’ team alignment – case study
Why a 'whole system' approach to alignment? Traditionally, alignment is defined as the extent to which employee goals match with functional and organizational goals. However, research in the social sciences informs us that misalignment occurs strategically as well as...
When clarification is hard work
Some clarification questions Imagine you’re a leader and one of your direct reports likes to clarify things. The kind of clarification questions they would ask might go like this: What would this development mean to our various stakeholders? What is the...
Spotting the gaps in team alignment – a can of worms?
If you exposed some alignment gaps within a team, would this be opening a can of worms, or helping them move closer to success? Maybe I've been living in the Netherlands for too long. Here, I see that when two people at work discover a difference of opinion, they...
Managers say they have given direction to staff. Staff are confused about direction. Why?
When Managers can’t understand why staff aren’t getting a message they feel they’ve been repeating over and over, everyone gets confused. And this issue does more damage the longer it is s left to fester.
Immediate, effortless results
When you're feeling annoyed and negative about your differences with someone, it always seems to come as a surprise when the right words said in the right way and in the right setting can immediately set it all free. Effortlessly. At no cost. All people want is to be...