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People or Process – It all started at Macca’s

I was very fortunate to begin my professional career working at McDonald’s in Australia. I started as a crew member, then became a crew trainer before becoming the youngest store manager for the company at the time. It was a great feeling running a multi million dollar business at such a young age. As I reflect, I look at McDonald’s of today (now more known as Macca’s) and ask myself where have the standards gone. Macca’s is very strict with their systems and processes as

Building Trust

Trust is an essential management tool in business and in any relationship. Building up trust within your organisation and employees is now more important than ever Trust is imperative for your business to function. Employees need to trust in one another and in those that lead them. To be at their most effective, your team needs to be fully engaged in decisions impacting them and their work routine as to increase their commitment to achieving it. We speak of Trust as somethi

Freedom to work how I want

There are no formal theories, yet companies have been shifting towards what is now known as Corporate Liberation. A liberated company allows employees freedom and responsibility to take actions that they, not their managers, decide are best for their company’s vision. That doesn’t mean the company is not managed. It simply shifts the hierarchical role of the manager to one of leader and coach, developing and guiding their people towards personal and company success. A spec

Strategic Planning – No longer the sleeping beast

Strategic planning, whether that be annual or long term planning, use to be an event that established the business plan and financial budgets for the coming period. It was developed into a nice document and often neglected after the huge investment upfront. In order to be successful, this old approach will not work. Strategic documents, whether long or short term must be a living breathing document that is active and reviewed no less than each quarter to confirm its relevanc

Changing Workplace Pattern - Some Core Facts

The past 15 months have seen some huge changes in work patterns. Below are some facts from Harvard Business School you may find interesting. 2.95% more recipients to each email. 5.2% more emails sent daily. 8.3% more emails were sent after business hours. 13% more meetings. 12% reduction in duration of meetings. 14% more people invited to each meeting 10.6% longer days worked

Rapid Adaptation – The new norm

If anything, the past 15 months have proved to us all both personally and professionally that we are very good at adapting rapidly. From a personal point of view, this gives us the confidence, self belief, and inspiration to deliver better than we ever have. This however carries with it a consequence we did not dream of, our key stakeholders also noticed our ability to rapidly adapt and have taken note and will now be using this as their new benchmark moving forward. Boards

Exceptional talent

― people with the ability to bring creativity and ingenuity to their work. Companies that acquire and retain exceptional talent are 20% more productive than the rest due to the way they onboard, develop, collaborate, engage, and lead their people. Remote work has increased this number due to the fact that your exceptional talent can engage virtually in a broader range of initiatives and teams than they could physically — multiplying the influence these individuals have on p

It’s a matter of Trust

In highly productive organisations, employees have capitalised on new technologies and work routines to stay connected with customers and co-workers. It is estimate that the best organisations have seen productive time increase by 5% or more. But it all comes down to a matter of Trust. Companies that trust their leaders and people increased their productivity significantly, where those companies that did not, suffered with meeting and email overload. In research carried ou

So how are we doing?

Over the past 18 months companies have had to adapt to new ways of doing things. From working at home, using new technology, to new ways of operating at the workplace. Our people have been doing their best to deliver, but how well are you doing? The truth is, it depends on how well you were doing before the sudden change and the quality of your leadership. Businesses that had great leadership and were doing well prior to the sudden change continued to adapt and perform wel

Knowledge and skills

The ability to develop fresh skills and gain new knowledge is a critical factor with the ever-changing times we have been facing and it applies to both leaders and employees. Companies have always focused on the development of their people but have for far too long overlooked the importance of leadership development. It is the leader that sets the tone of the company and if there is a skills gap in leadership then the business and people will suffer. With the current rate o

Make work Meaningful

Keeping people motivated to want to come to work is critical. Below are Seven deadly sins of Meaninglessness - things we do as leaders that may demotivate our people Disconnect people from their values Take workers for granted Give people pointless work Treat people unfairly/unequally Override people’s better judgement Disconnect people from supportive relationships Put people at physical or emotional risk Source Catherine Baily and Adrian Madden, MIT SLOAN Management Review

Building and adapting skills

According to a Mercer survey of 2020, 99% of organisations say they want to embark on transformation, and almost all reporting significant skills gaps in their people with reskilling as the top talent investment capable of driving business success. Workforce capability and lack of future skills are seen as primary reasons why transformations fail, and reskilling is one of the investments that is critical for the ongoing adaption and growth of any organisation. Of those surv

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