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The Hedgehog Concept
What is the Hedgehog Concept? Simply, it is a toll by which you can get clarity on what you do and what you don’t do as a business. Based on the essay by Isaiah Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox” it describes how the world is divided into two types. The fox knows many things. The fox is a very cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies to sneak attack upon hedgehog. The hedgehog knows one big
Three Types of Listening
Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process. Listening is key to all effective communication; without the ability to listen effectively messages is easily misunderstood – communication breaks down and the people can become frustrated or irritated. Listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing refers to the sounds that you hear, whereas listening requires more than that: it requires focus. When you listen you paying attention not only to the story, but to
The Cost of Employee Turnover
Losing staff can cost you more than you know! It is only in recent years that businesses have started to assess the cost of employee turnover. For many years it has not been an area of priority, simply because it wasn’t being measured and what isn’t measured isn’t valued. So what are some of the costs associated with employee turnover? Lowered productivity – you will find that either the work of the individual who has left is now not being
The Unreasonable Man
Creating the world around yourself We often pride ourselves on how reasonable and logical we are. We see it as a strength. Our ability to gather the data and information, to analyze it and make sense of it, and then to act on it are strengths. They are assets we can use to generate results and create wealth. But is being reasonable and logical really so? George Bernard Shaw, one of the great literary figures of the late nineteenth and
The Difference Between Leadership Training vs. Leadership Development
A succinct overview of the differences between the training and development of leaders. In a previous article, I wrote about the importance of developing leaders, not training them.In this article, we discuss how training which is fixed, one-dimensional, backward looking and one-size-fits-all in its approach is not suited for the new business reality in which we operate. The new business reality is that leaders are having to lead and operate in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. To
Why Is It Hard to Change Ourselves?
Change starts with ourselves, but why is it so hard to do? To change ourselves we need to change our behaviour. This is difficult to do and even harder to sustain. In fact it can be one of the hardest things that we do. If you think I’m exaggerating this then answer these three questions for yourself: What do you want to change in your life? - This might be something minor or major, just think of something that is
The Conflict Outcomes Matrix
The four alternative results you can realize in any conflict There are four outcomes that can result from a conflict between the two main protagonists, depending who ‘wins’ and who ‘loses’. The Conflict Outcomes Matrix Win-Win: Both parties “Win.” You both know you have achieved what you needed, but not at the expense of the other. This provides a good basis for a long-term relationship. Win-Lose: The others win at your expense. You have given up something and got nothing,
When Planning Can Be Counter-Productive
Planning and rituals can help you, but if you over plan you can stress yourself out. As humans, we need to have a degree of flexibility and spontaneity in what we do. Think of a time when you had to work to a tight and unforgiving plan. As Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (chief of staff of the Prussian Army for thirty years in the nineteenth century) said, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy” – we find that
Carry Out a Premortem
How to anticipate problems and failure before they occur We are all familiar with post-mortems and forensic examinations from all the TV crime series. Post-mortems are good for telling you what went wrong, why it went wrong, and the consequences of things going wrong (death in this instance) – but it doesn’t change the fact that the individual is still dead. It is a case of being wise after the event, but being wise after the event doesn’t stop or