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This image and diagram helps explains why so many development or change programmes struggle to effect real changes in individuals. We are so used to putting people in rooms or pointing them towards e-learning portals and filling them up with lots of fantastic , practical tools and models for them to use. However, unless we also provide the time and means for them to really understand how an individual’s unique perceptions and thinking drive that individual’s unique behaviour, then they won’t make the breakthroughs that will allow them to recognise when and how they can use the fantastic, practical tools they have been […]

Right then. I have just put the dinner on and have 20 minutes or so before Number 1 Daughter comes in from school – I am working from home today – so I thought I would share some interesting research on multitasking.

The Human Connectome Project (HCP) gets some nice coverage from the BBC today.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 540th birthday of Copernicus who’s heliocenctric model of our solar system fundamentally changed how we see the world and man’s place in it.

To what extent is it true that 'two heads are better than one'? A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing of Sensorimotor Information may not seem like the answer to the question but it could prove a (somewhat controversial) milestone on the way to getting the answer.

Recently I was invited by CIPD to take part in their new venture based on Daniel Pink’s fantastic book Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us

There is a new study ‘What can neuroscience teach education?’ getting underway at the Wellcome Trust that seeks to identify what are the most appropriate ‘well-justified, evidence-based neuroscience interventions in educational settings’. When it has done it’s initial research it will be interesting to see what ways neuroscience is already informing education practice and to see the evidence base for efficacy.  It seems inevitable that neuroscience will significantly change education in the not too distant future – we may even arrive at an agreed model of learning – and this will obviously have implications for development practice in the workplace.  […]

This week we have started new development programmes with two clients; one a consortium of local authorities and the other a digital strategy consulting firm.  In many ways the two clients could not be more different especially from an employee profile point of view.  The former has many long serving employees lots of whom  haven’t worked anywhere else, the latter is full of recent grads and ‘second jobbers’.  ‘Baby boomers’ Vs. ‘Millenials’ might be an over simplification but not by too much.   What they have in common though is a workplace that is changing rapidly, extremely demanding and full of […]

This article The Neuroscience At The Heart Of Learning And Leading got me thinking that one of the advantages of basing our work on neuroscience is that it seems to allow us to have conversations in the workplace that can otherwise be difficult to get people engaged with.  A really good example is our current work with managers in a large defence organisation.  Participants tend to be of a certain age, gender and outlook – most of them are engineers – that experience suggests won’t readily embrace ‘emotional intelligence’ as a topic that is pertinent to their development.  Yet when […]

I have come across a number of clients lately who have given up on email.  For some it has been an admission of defeat –  ‘one more thing I can’t stay on top of’, for others it has been a more empowering ‘I’m not going to spend an infinite amount of time on something that adds so little value’.  For evidence of how little value email adds we can refer to the study by Atos consulting that concluded that staff were spending up to 20% of their time dealing with email but that only 15% of the email added any […]

This week we finished a programme we have been delivering for a digital media consultancy – as fast paced and rapidly changing an environment as I have come across.  The organisation is chock full of very bright, very driven, very engaged people who are absolutely on a mission to go and do great things – they are also mostly of an age that made me feel quite, old!   The positivity and energy in the organisation is almost tangible but what makes it a really special place is that the steadfast results focus is more than balanced by the genuine […]

For a number of years now I have done a half-day session at one of the pre-eminent London Business Schools as part of student’s induction to their M.Sc. in Organisational Behaviour.  The objective of my workshop is to give students a practitioner’s perspective on the application of organisational behaviour (OB) and organisational development (OD) theory.  Typically I run the session as a case study based on a project I was involved in a number of years ago.  The context is the preparation of a response to a (potentially very lucrative) Invitation to Tender (ITT) where the client has given a […]