The human brain doesn’t like change – it doesn’t feel safe.  The discomfort of change is obvious when we go through a relationship breakdown, lose our job or find ourselves in a confronting new situation. However research tells us that even going on holidays is stressful, as we get used to new surroundings and less familiar daily routines.  When change is external this process is easier to see…

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So many people these days seem to be in the pursuit of happiness. It is the foundation of Buddhist teachings and positive psychology – which pursues happiness using scientific methodology. At the same time we know that 26.2{4db85cf3f2d17db004754f7348203bacbe7804d0c9f206eb67a49c242c149d5e} of Americans aged 18+ (i.e. about one in four) suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year. Nearly 45{4db85cf3f2d17db004754f7348203bacbe7804d0c9f206eb67a49c242c149d5e} of the population will experience a…

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I was talking recently with an entrepreneur who has built his business around spiritual principles. The business has been very successful. He was expounding that other already existing businesses should convert to a spiritual basis – even if it made them less successful. This took me back to my early days as a consultant. Back then I was teaching people to use their emotional intelligence as…

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I recently heard a senior engineer admit that he prepared his Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at the beginning of this year, put them in the bottom of his desk drawer and left them there until next year! His story was not an uncommon one.  KPIs are actually a form of measurement following on from the belief “What gets measured gets done. “When asked about his…

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According to Mitroff & Silvers in “Dirty Rotten Strategies” (2010), type three errors occur when we get the perfect solution to the wrong problem. Common causes for solving the wrong problems are:  Closed belief systems – resulting in defining the problem too narrowly. This happens when we use a single preferred discipline, profession, ideology, worldview or set of assumptions ignoring or discrediting the values, systems,…

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Boards seem to be very interested in the results of engagement surveys in which there is a burgeoning industry. CEOs are responding by ensuring they are doing “something” about low engagement scores. We recently researched this trend. It turns out that most engagement surveys are based on research done by those selling the surveys. Moreover, there is little agreement on the definition of engagement and…

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At a seminar on happiness the highly qualified and enthusiastic presenter was urging us all to have goals for everything we wanted in our lives. These goals needed to be specific, measurable and time bounded. The first pushback came from a woman who said she didn’t want to put that much pressure on herself. She had already achieved a lot and was now looking to…

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The most recent IBM Global CEO study (of 1500 CEOs) reveals that complexity is seen by leaders as their key challenge. CEOs suggest that they operate in a world that is substantially more volatile, uncertain and complex than in the past. This rise in complexity makes incremental change no longer sufficient as market, technology and macroeconomic factors now operate on fundamentally changed rules and dynamics….

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Thomas Kuhn in The structure of Scientific Revolutions developed the concept of paradigm shift. When the paradigm changes so does what we observe and scrutinise, the kinds of questions we ask, how these questions are structured, how we interpret results and, in turn, how we relate to our world. Examples of paradigm shifts include the shift from geometrical optics to physical optics, the development of…

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In a recent article in London’s Financial Times, Alan Greenspan (the man many consider to be a causal agent in the global financial crisis) suggests that an ever growing and unmanageably complex financial system might be a “necessary condition of growth”. Financial instability is in fact a reason to build resilience into our organisations The experts tell us that we will have to learn to…

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