The Blogworld of Poppyfish People Development

Trust is one of those core values that we like to hold dear, both at home and at work. Having trust in someone is a liberating feeling, a feeling that we know we are in good hands, no matter what happens. A feeling of something shared. The phrase “Trust me” is the ultimate statement that we use when we have tried almost every other form of reassurance, when we just know everything will be alright. So trust then, is a good thing and most of us want to see more of it. Lose trust and you lose the relationship. Anyone with a failed marriage will tell you that relationships in which trust has been lost are doomed to a miserable future. The curious thing however is that trust, like common sense, isn’t actually all that common. Especially not, it seems, in the world of work. The UK CIPD have recently published the results of a workplace survey claiming that  just over a third (37%) of employees trust their organisation’s senior management. By inference therefore the other 63% do not...

Care for some management speak, your Grace? Let's start with an anecdote. The night before the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington was asked a question by one of his junior officers. " What are your plans, your grace? " the officer asked. “ To beat the French ” was the Duke's curt reply. When the questioner went on to suggest that the Duke might be well advised to share his more detailed plans with his men in case he himself were to be injured the Duke tersely replied, “ If I thought my hair knew what my brain was thinking I’d shave it orf and wear a wig ”. How times change. This morning, an e-mail newsletter arrived in my inbox from the McKinsey Quarterly  . It contained the sort of thinking that would have the dear old Duke of Wellington ripping out his hair and which would have curled his toes inside his now famous boots. The McKinsey article talks about “Crowdsourcing”. According to wikipedia crowdsourcing is about "outsourcing ta...