The Blogworld of Poppyfish People Development

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 ...

The room was bursting with undergraduates. In fact, had Roy Castle and Norris McWhirter walked in then the Record Breaking nature of what was about to happen would have been plain for all to see. Simulations involving over 60 people in one open session are rare beasts. Yet thanks to a chance conversation with Dr Tassos Patokos of the University of Hertfordshire Business School we, and his sixty students, were about to indulge ourselves exactly that. My mind went back to the chat Dr Patokos and I had over a glass of wine at a conference three months earlier. We had moved on from the euro-crisis and had started finding a more stable common ground, discussing how simulations can inject energy and creativity into learning. An expert in Game Theory, Dr Patokos was eager to see how such events played out, and how they might offer learning opportunities in which his undergraduate students could experience a different perspective on their work topics. We agreed to set somet...

A room full of scientists and technology transfer professionals may not be everyone's idea of a fun filled afternoon but anyone who attended the first Poppyfish Biodecision Simulation Workshop earlier this month would hopefully agree with me when I say that what was shared that afternoon was informative, fun and filled with learning.   This proof of concept workshop for Biodecision was the first time that this particular workshop had been held and took place at Rothamsted Research with the support of  InCrops .  Aims The aim of the Biodecision workshop is to create a system in miniature and to explore how people and organisations within the system interact and make decisions. The system in question is the commercialisation system for new technology. In this instance we chose fictional patented developments associated with the fictional biofuel, 'Cropanol', but this topic could vary depending on the audience. We split the fifteen delegates into s...