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...

Ask anyone what they would do if they could travel in time and sooner or later someone will tell you they would go forward to the next lottery draw date, so they could return to the present day and buy the winning ticket. This week the Euromillions lottery is another roll over. Visualising the future isn’t easy. But never mind our own fanciful dreams of lottery riches, for managers and leaders creating strategy in today’s organisations seeing into the future is an essential skill, yet developing this foresight can be incredibly difficult. Taking the brave first steps now in a change programme to move your company towards an uncertain future can be even harder. How can we know what the future will hold? If only we could travel through time. If only we had a machine to take us there…. In Poppyfish simulations the scenario is our vehicle to the future. Climbing aboard a simulated exercise that projects your business into the future can be the vehicle that enables our expl...

Running wargames for business is not about playing soldiers As an Organisational Development Consultant I view wargaming as one of many possible interventions that I can offer to clients to allow them to challenge their own thinking and as a space for personal development and the spotlighting of talent.  For organisations we approach them as ways of building evidence of a spirit in support of resilience – that ability to maintain a dynamically stable state under continuous stress. Negotiation scenarios can be a subject for exercise, although critical incidents such as cyber threats, PR crisis, continuity incidents, strategic planning horizons and PR crises are more popular, and often higher profile, areas for our clients. Whole system approach Organisations exist as whole systems experienced by people, so from our OD perspective we like to look at the human influences and impacts of the scenario. Because of this, we do not tend to use software to number crunch as we g...

Decision making is at the heart of management and leadership. Typically it is a process about closing the gap between where we are and where we want to be.   The process can be simplified as follows: Once we decide , we   act . After acting, we monitor the results of our actions. Finally, we evaluate the results we’ve monitored. This can be presented as a Decision Execution Cycle (DEC) shown below: Decision Execution Cycle There is nothing complicated about this. The DEC is a common sense approach that few would argue against and many of us will recognise this as being valid for most organisations. Its simplicity is central to its success, but to throw a different light on this I want to introduce the concept of a similar but subtly different model for understanding decision making in action – the wonderfully titled "OODA loop".   The OODA Loop One of the most interesting and fascinatingly simple models in the study of how people actua...

 The benefits of business wargames, simulations and decision making exercises  We left the last blog entry on a cliff hanger : How can simulations, red teams, decision making exercises and business wargames benefit organisations? Our experience of such simulations at Poppyfish  is that there are eight basic ways that this happens: 1. Stimulating innovative and creative thinking in a low risk environment. A realistic scenario allows learners to experience the type of decision making challenge that they will only face in moments of crisis – moments that they do not come across in their day to day working lives. Such activities provide opportunities to stimulate innovative and creative thinking in a low risk environment. The process of being involved in a closed door session serves to focus the mind of managers and leaders on the scenario and allows focussed discussion in a way that the normal day-to-day activities do not allow. 2. Challenging ...

With less than a week to go until the start of the London Olympics let's start with a topical metaphor. Think of a successful organisation as a healthy athlete. Honed, toned, in the zone and eager for success. Reaching the pinnacle of Olympic success takes time, commitment, vision and only comes with dedicated practice and preparation. This preparation comes in different forms – mental and physical - and all with the aim of being at your best when the moment of truth arrives.  Coaches ask their athletes to visualise what it will feel like to compete, to imagine in great detail, how they will compete in those vital moments when there is all to gain, or all to lose. What does success look like? What will it take to win through? How will it feel to do so? What needs to happen for success to be realised? The same preparatory techniques can be applied to organisations, where simulations can form part of this preparation, helping the organisation develop and maintain its v...