The Blogworld of Poppyfish People Development

I've written and spoken about it so many times that to some people I must be starting to sound like a cracked record. But just in case this is completely new to you then let me crank the gramophone handle one more time.... The most amazing thing about critical incidents that impact organisations is not that they happen but that they do not happen more often. Turn on the news and you'll find one in an instant. Right now, somewhere in the world, an organisation is experiencing a critical incident. And you only have to look at the "Wall of Terror" below to see some potential consequences. So if there is a certain inevitability surrounding the fact that the organisation that you work in will experience a critical incident then what can leaders do to ensure that their organisation will survive?  Here's our suggested top 5 values, attitudes and behaviours: Communicate the vision Organisations that keep going through critical incidents have a strong...

Old Bill Shakespeare knew a thing or two about most things, but not even he dared to combine theatre with performance management.  Forum Theatre is a style of drama pioneered by the radical, innovative and influential Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal. First created as a way to explore how people can change the world around them Forum Theatre is used to allow audiences to take over the direction of events, allowing the audience to direct the actors in an attempt to change the outcome of events on stage. In its purest form an audience member interjects at any time in the play and steps up to take the place of the characters, or to suggest what the character should do next. The play then goes on following this new approach.  Radical? Possibly. Chaotic? Definitely. Applicable to organisational development and learning? Absolutely! At Poppyfish we can apply Forum Theatre in any context where individuals are attempting to ‘learn’ a new process or technique, especially wher...

Organisational culture can be a confusing topic, especially for those who have never come across it before. Those of us who ponce around talking about leadership and organisational dynamics tend to forget that, for many, culture is a bit of a buzzword. Often, others associate culture with going to the ballet or liking opera, not to “the way we do things around here”. So to help us explore the ideas around culture with those who have never encountered it before we’ve developed the idea of The Culture Box . It works as a great metaphor for organisational culture and doubles up as a fun group exercise for teams getting started with the concept of culture.  So how does it work?  The Culture Box Exercise For this exercise you will need a large cardboard box. The larger the better. Ideally you can use one that’s large enough for one or two members of the group to sit in. Then, with the box placed in the centre of the room, enlist your volunteer(s) and sit them in the box. If ...

Poppyfish People Development is pleased to be partnering the construction company, Durkan Limited, in its new LEAD initiative which gets underway in June. The company wide Durkan LEAD programme will see all 160 employees embark on a pathway of learning and development that is designed to maximise individual potential and generate continuous performance improvement across the firm. Each Durkan employee will be enrolled on one of three learning pathways, each following a personalised structure that will see a number of compulsory events supplemented by additional optional events that the employee can choose to attend. Employees that complete all compulsory courses and an appropriate number of optional courses will be entitled to receive a 'Durkan Diploma' in recognition of their learning. “ We are very pleased to be able to offer this exciting new opportunity to our staff ,” said Ian Cresswell, Director of Health & Safety, Quality and Environment at Durkan, “ we fee...

Pandemic is a Poppyfish business simulation and management learning exercise designed to help organisations to understand the possible consequences of an outbreak of pandemic flu. The simulation involves participants managing a number of realistically structured and interactive departments, business units or teams through a pandemic cycle, juggling resources to maintain operations and deliver objectives. Run as a one day phased decision making exercise Pandemic uses data on infection rates from the UK Dept of Health and NHS but is tailored specifically to the organisational hierarchy of the client organisation. Learning objectives The learning objective of this simulation is that by the end of the session participants will have negotiated their organisation through a 15 week pandemic cycle and will understand more about the impact that an event such as a pandemic flu outbreak could have on their workplace. The simulation is primarily about strengthening organisational resilience ...

Ahead of some upcoming conferences and important workshops that we are involved with over the coming weeks we've been busy indulging our creative side and blowing the budget this week on some new publicity materials to help spread the word of Poppyfish. Just thought we'd share a few on the blog. We hope you like them. You can also see these on our facebook page. Alongside our more established OD work we have chosen to emphasis the key contribution that simulations and decision making exercises can make your people development programmes and organisational resilience, under the title "Simulate to Stimulate". We always welcome the opportunity to talk to anyone interested in incorporating these activities into their organisation learning and resilience programmes.        

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...

Is Business Continuity a form of OD? It's a bit early in the week to wire up  "The Cogitator" and consider the world of OD through my own particular lens, but as I am delivering a Business Continuity decision making exercise this week I wanted to stop for a moment to consider the connection between Business Continuity and Organisational development. Does BC = OD? Simulations provide a key opportunity for learning and offer an opportunity to analyse decision making in a safe environment and are an excellent tapestry for personal development, yet few relatively few organisations choose to run decision making exercises for this purpose. In the field of L&D overall simulations tend to be niche areas, and not always regarded as the first option. I find this rather thought provoking, especially when the role of simulations is so well established in some other areas of organisations. Take for instance the field of Business Continuity. Business Continui...

A  few weeks ago I had to renew an insurance policy using a new online form. One of the questions the website wanted me to answer was " What is your job ?". Next to the question was a drop down list on which there were, quite literally, hundreds of options. The list included some familiar occupations: Accountant, Actuary, Receptionist, Welder, Priest, Car Mechanic and Quantity Surveyor, etc were all listed. Scattered among them were a host of other more unusual ways to earn a crust including: Axeman, Astronaut, Chicken Chaser and Chicken Sexer.  I was so absorbed by some of these the amazing sounding jobs that I must have I scrolled up and down the list over a dozen times. I was amazed at its thoroughness. It seemed that just about every profession, or in some cases, bizarre fetish, that you could imagine, was listed.   But Organisational Development Consultant wasn't on the list.   T he suggestion that there are more astronauts tha...