The Blogworld of Poppyfish People Development

My 10 year old daughter was not impressed. For the third week running the judges on the hit ITV show X-Factor had reached 'deadlock' , where the four person panel had a split vote on which of the  contestents would go out of the competition that week. Instead, under the rules of the competition, the fate of the apparently equally awful contestants would be decided by referring back to the public telephone vote. Now, I'm not a massive fan of the X-factor, or of reality style TV shows on the whole to be honest, and there is always a side of me that sides with the sceptics who say that nothing happens by chance in television, but for me there was something about this situation that raised my interest. Let's assume, for the moment at least, that the situation that the judging panel found itself in was not contrived. How come they had once again got themselves into a situation where the decision did not rest with them, but with some outside 'higher agency' (ie...

  Yesterday , 21st October, saw the first Poppyfish Tweetfest . A tweetfest , we have decided, is a themed day of twitter and social media activities from Poppyfish, a time when we take a break out to celebrate specific days that may have a relevant link to people and organisational development. On this occasion we tweeted around 50 statements and quotes highlighting the leadership qualities of Horatio Nelson. You can follow this on twitter via our @Poppyfish_PD account. Our launch day couldn’t have been better chosen. 21st October this year marked the 207th anniversary of the tumultuous battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Trafalgar was a battle in which the organisational and leadership weaknesses of the navies of France and Spain were exposed decisively, cruelly and with awe inspiring capability by Britain’s Royal Navy led by it’s most inspirational and charismatic leader, Horatio Nelson. And so it was that we choise to focus this inaugural tweetfest on Nelson and leadership ...

It's been many years since I completed my MBA, so I am thrilled to have been selected as this weeks " Alumnus of the Week " at the University of Hertfordshire Business School. My graduation with what was then called the Executive MBA (with distinction no less) marked a turning point in my career and, in a way that my more recent MSc in People and Organaisational Development has also done, inspired me on to new and better things. I value the academic strength of my CV. Academic work at Master's level requires a degree of critical evaluation and self understanding that has allowed me to contextualise the world around me in a much more enlightened way and has enabled me to influence and shape the way I work and prioritise what is important for me and the organisations with which I work. Choosing to study the MBA back in the late 1990's gave me the courage to step outside the world of finance. I remember when I was selecting a course of study it came down to c...

I was thrilled last week to hear that Poppyfish was to be featured in a couple of online profiles at the new web community " entrepreneur cubed " (available now) and through the University of Hertfordshire Business School.  (week commencing 15th October). About e³ Entrepreneur cubed - or e³ for short - is an online business magazine designed to encourage and build a community of existing and aspiring entrepreneurs. Founder Chris Hutchings allows a growing group of entrepreneurs (his term - I still don't believe that I have quite earned that label) to tell their story through a series of short interviews. Through e³ Chris is building a growing community of business founders and owners and offers them a great place to raise awareness of their brand/company. We wish him every success and are glad to be part of that community. To read the Poppyfish profile interview on e³ visit http://entrepreneurcubed.co.uk/nick-skinner/ Follow e³ on twitter at ...

Thinking things through with the help of a fully charged "Cogitator" Where were we? A couple of posts ago I put on “the cogitator” to consider the idea that Business Continuity (BC) and Organisational Development (OD) shared similar goals. In this post I muse on why it is that in many organisations BC can often appear to have more buy-in than OD. The victory of BC Business Continuity, with its emphasis on systems resilience perhaps pays testimony to the general victory of thinking over feeling when it comes to achieving strategic buy in to an activity. Ask an executive to reach for his Business Continuity Plan and you may well find he can locate a copy within reach of his desk, or perhaps on a memory stick or even available to him in a virtual cloud. He will have seen it, will probably have been involved in the shaping of it, and may even have tested it through an exercise or simulation. Ask the same executive to show him the organisational development or L...

There is something about quotes that makes them a favoured output of development gurus and coaches.   They contain highly contagious messages with a pithy ‘bumper sticker’ appeal that makes them perfect for the Twitter-fest of quotes that whizz past on my Twitter feed. One of the most influential quotes that I have come across and that keeps me ‘on mission’ at Poppyfish is this one:   "Success does not happen by spontaneous combustion, you must first set yourself on fire" I love the idea this paints. For me it sums up what Poppyfish is all about. Until today though I had no idea of the origin of the quote, it being just something that I’d carried in my head over the past few years. I found out this morning that this quote should be sourced to a chap by the name of Arnold H Glasow . Googling Mr Glasow doesn’t really enrich our understanding of him, the extent of my knowledge coming from the following: "Arnold Henry Glasow was born in Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin, US...