News

‘Monkeys’ in this context are other people’s problems that somehow end up on your back. In reality, this is easily done. Often requests for your time are fuelled by other people’s priorities and tend to arrive by e-mail! Beware of these monkeys; each time you say ‘Yes’, you are picking up another monkey. The longer […]

We’re big fans of Sir Terry Leahy’s new book, ‘Management in 10 words’. Sir Terry Leahy is a great example of what hard work and determination can achieve and provides inspiration in any management training course. As someone who started at Tesco stacking shelves; progressing at a pace to becoming Chief Executive 18 years later, […]

We used a great energiser recently during our Building a High Performance Team course called ‘Human Bingo’. This energiser follows ordinary bingo rules, except that the game is played while mingling in the classroom or at a party looking for specific “people” characteristics. The object of the game is to find individuals within the room […]

Many people are talking about the Service Profit Chain currently which comes from a recent Harvard Review. Interestingly, we are also currently delivering numerous customer service training projects around this for companies across different sectors and industries. Our view in the upturn of this type of training is that companies have to work much harder […]

We use a great short activity during our Leading change and innovation course that managers could use with their team – all that is needed is a tennis ball. The benefit of the exercise is that it allows teams to think about how they can improve on what they do currently, i.e. how can they […]

With the Olympics looming, (the start is exactly 100 days away from today),  this book by Mihir Bose caught our eye as it explores how sport has influenced the modern world. This fascinating book walks us through the history of sport and clarifies how the links to business began when the value of endorsement was […]

We tested out the simple  ‘5 whys’ problem solving technique recently to get to the root of a problem quickly and we have to say that it does work. This technique became popular in the 1970’s by Toyota. The  ‘5 whys’ approach involves looking at any problem or issue and simply asking ‘why?’ or ‘what […]

The CMI latest research report suggests that while 2011 has been a very difficult year for UK managers, 2012 looks set to be equally challenging. Nearly half of UK managers are expecting redundancies in 2012, and over a third of managers feel insecure in their jobs. Managers have grave concerns over their organisations’ people capabilities […]

Leadership development over recent years has traditionally placed great emphasis on the need for leaders to be innovative in order to lead their organisation to greater levels of success. Controversially, the author of Good to Great, Jim Collins believes that greatness comes from consistency rather than innovation. In his new book, ‘Great by Choice’, he […]

We came across a fantastic simple creativity tool called DO IT, devised by Robert W Olsen in his book ‘The Art of Creative Thinking’. This tool helps to introduce a formal method of problem definition and evaluation as well as provide a structured process for creativity. DO IT is an acronym that stands for: D […]