Member Article

Rethinking Normality

Are you in the business of doing well? We’re experiencing the pace of change and noticing some of the ways in which companies are today doing business well.

Businesses that are doing well recognise the skills that are required in todays world including creativity, collaboration, and flexibility - these are often valued above academic achievement. People and businesses are moving towards more flexible ways of working and learning.

Consider Jake, a promising young new recruit who is just too busy to attend training, finds it hard to pay attention in appraisals and is restless in team meetings. Jake prefers to learn at the moment of need, he collaborates with others and researches answers from his global network. He is curious and creative about how he can achieve more.

For Jake, the well meaning training programme offers him little development opportunity or new knowledge compared to what he can get from informal interactions with others. The appraisal doesn’t require him to ask the right questions or develop insight. The team meetings simply demonstrate how linear approaches to work don’t go beyond delivering the essential product or service.

Perhaps businesses that do well are capitalising on the potential of their people to create new ways of doing things in a dynamic, collaborative and selective way that is focused on individual need rather than the collective acceptance of normality. There is an increasing need to develop the enduring strengths of creativity, collaboration and flexibility; how well are we doing that?

On the 5th October the North East chapter of the Change Management Institute is welcoming Phil Jackman who will lead an interactive session on Guerrilla Working. Guerrilla Working is a challenge to all of the procedures, practices and tenets that hold current organisations together but are in fact holding them back. Explore how creativity, collaboration and flexibility can help us manage a business that is doing well.

Contact Katharine at Act Positive to find out more and attend telephone 07976 535864

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Katharine Roff .