In honour of Bloomsday on Sunday we’ll kick off by quoting Molly Bloom and asking:

“Oh Rocks – Tell us in plain words what you really mean!”.

First up is Professor Gareth Jones expert in organisational design, culture, leadership and change and award-winning author of “The Character of a Corporation: How Your Culture Can Make or Break Your Business” and “Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?”, co-authored with Rob Goffee.

So the workplace of our dreams is one that takes account of our characters as well as our skills.

Ulysses may have more relevance to management than we think; Joyce’s novel is a celebration of practical thinking in everyday life.

Through the mutual insights shared between the newspaper advertising salesman Leopold Bloom and the student-artist Stephen Dedalus, Joyce makes the case that two often divided concepts of work and creativity – or labour and play – are mutually dependent and must be realigned.

Jones and Goffee’s work has shown this message is as relevant today as it was when Ulysses was published in 1922.

Happy Bloomsday.

Professor Gareth Jones will be discussing his new research at an IMI HR Briefing on the evening of the 4th of July. If you’re interested in attending this event register here.

Image by @dkernohan

I’m personally very excited by the tsunami of free online content.  I just finished the excellent Model Thinking from the University of Michigan on Coursera on models for better decision-making.   The platform felt flexible but was deceptively fast-paced so while the platform was new the study guilt was old-sch0ol.

I could certainly have used it for logic programming or natural language processing in my undergraduate computer science years.

But for the business courses I’ve done since? Not so much. For the real-world practicalities of business strategy, innovation and finance the other participants in the room were as much a part of the learning as the subject matter being discussed and the expertise of the facilitator who drew on the experiences  to feed back into the learning.

So “what”, cry the bloggers, “will happen to our centres of learning when the universities up sticks and move online”?  The answer is that the good ones won’t.  At least not entirely.

The need for live and dynamic face-to-face learning experiences (as recognised even by those heavily involved in online) means we will see an unbundling of the educational offering.  What can go online, will.  What is left as face-to-face will need to be excellently designed to draw participants.

Coursera and its fellow MOOCs look set to become a highly valuable extension of the university – driving down operating costs and extending reach through advertising and pre-enrolment.  We’re likely to see dynamic pricing follow – as distance, previously gained credit and perhaps even the level of support given to other participants could all potentially combine to determine the price paid.

Learners won’t perceive the introduction of the technology as a shift – for them, the internet hasn’t invented a new type of learning any more than it invented bartering or bullying.  The integration has already begun – even allowing for the predictably high dropout rates, hundreds of thousands of people are already using online as a ‘go-to’ educational support.

The shift will be felt by teachers – who will be increasingly required to to design courses that participants are willing to pay for when content alone is freely available elsewhere.  If the future value proposition is in programme design then the scalability and big data offered by these platforms could be the saviour of the educational business model.

So in Model Thinking terms – it’s not so much a tipping point… more like a standing ovation model… I think?..Crushingly I got 74.5% – missing a certificate by half a percent.  I’m not sure any of my undergrad professors would have been so heartless.

Have you signed up for a MOOC? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comment area.

Eva Maguire is Strategic Projects Manager at IMI, currently leading IMI’s research project into management practices and productivity which seeks to globally benchmark the management of indigenous and multinational organisations operating in Ireland.

Are You Interested?

By Nancy Kline

 ‘You are so patient.’ I hear this after almost every Thinking Session demonstration. Other people tell me they often hear the same comment about their Attention as Thinking Partners, too. I guess what we do looks like patience. It is still. It is warm. It doesn’t rush. It breathes.

But patience is not what it is. Not remotely. Patience is a kind of waiting, a postponing. It is in reference to the moment when the thing, about which a person is being patient, will stop, and the person can finally act or speak. Patience is a polite dismissing of what is happening or being thought in this moment. It is an invisible drumming of the table. Patience wants the thing to end, but does not fan or act on that wanting. Patience is a cousin of arrogance. It is disengaged.

 Attention in a Thinking Environment is not patience.

 It is interest.

 It is breathless anticipation of what the Thinker will think, and say, next. It wants to know. It wants to hear the Thinker’s creations. It stands ready for birth.

 Patience is nowhere to be found. It is interest people are seeing. And interest does do amazing things.

 It creates thinking.

About Nancy Kline

Nancy Kline created and pioneered the development of the theory and process called The Thinking Environment®. This model allows people to turn their teams, organisations and relationships into Thinking Environments in which people at every level can think for themselves, with rigour, imagination and courage. The process increases the quality of thinking in, and thus of concrete results from, all human interactions, both in pairs and in groups, and decreases the amount of time it takes to achieve them.

As well as President of Time To Think, an international leadership development and coaching company Nancy is also a published author and public speaker.

Nancy and the other Time To Think Consultants and Coaches do Thinking Environment work in companies, universities, human resource organisations, government agencies and voluntary organisations. Thinking Environment work is active in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, The United States, Australia and South Africa.

Time To Think began in 1984 and grew out of Nancy’s consulting and teaching work near Washington, DC, where she had served as a Founding Director of The Thornton Friends School for twelve years and as Director of The Leadership Institute for six years. She is a Fellow of Ashridge College, UK.

It’s easy to feel bombarded by the different data sources competing for our attention in the modern working environment. And while the Internet is undoubtedly a rich source of information, comparatively little has been done to connect the vast number of tools available in the form of websites, apps, RSS feeds, etc.

Essentially, the Internet has no centre and though we call it ‘the web’ there is relatively little lateral movement.

In reality, it’s more like a series of islands and our browser is the boat. So how can we best navigate it?

I’m finding the simple approach of IFTTT is co-ordinating my work on the web and leading to greater efficiency – something every manager can appreciate.

IFTTT.com (It’s pronounced as it’s spelled – like the word ‘sift’ without the ‘s’) is designed to address this disconnect between web tools.

IFTTT is an acronym for ‘If This Then That’. The service allows you to create tasks which are set to be performed if a certain event occurs, almost like a very literal personal assistant.

This turns out to be extremely useful. There are an endless number of combinations. For example, ‘if a Financial Times article discussing my industry is published, then send it to my email address’ or ‘if I check-in with Four-Square then add it to my calendar’ for a handy diary entry. Want to backup your documents instantly? –  ‘if a document is saved in DropBox, then save it in Box.com’.  Avoid missing a meeting by setting up ‘if anything changes in my calendar, then send me an SMS notification’.

Simplicity is clearly the objective. In fact the entire site looks like it was designed by Fisher-Price. The layout could not be more basic. The text and graphics are huge and there are few click-ables. Don’t let the simple appearance dissuade you from the power of the tool. As more functions are added and the user-base creates new recipes, IFTTT will continue to evolve into an increasingly useful tool for managing the sea of information we all need to navigate on a daily basis.

Are there any managers using IFTTT.com now? Please add a comment and share your recipes.

Matthew Kelleher is the Library Manager at IMI. His interests include information management technology, human-computer interaction and online learning.

In my job as facilitator, empathy is the most critical skill I rely on to guide groups through though organisational development processes. Yet for many managers and business leaders, empathy can make people uncomfortable or be seen a sign of weakness, so much so that it is often referred to as a “soft skill.”

It is important to understand that empathy is at the core of healthy and sound interactions, it is what drives each one of us to recognise when someone is in difficulty and to provide them with help. In my experience, it is at the centre of collaborative work.

During my research on Emotional Intelligence and Management Practice I find that there is a direct correlation between the extent to which managers “care about what happens to others” and their ability to address poor performance effectively. I can safely say that while empathy is about interacting with people effectively it is also most certainly a hard skill: it is directly wired into our brain through the “Mirror neurons”, it can be practiced and developed through very specific exercises, it triggers reciprocity.

So how can you develop empathy?

Pay attention – empathy starts by recognising the minute physiological changes in the person we are interacting with. Paul Ekman spent most of his career codifying the connection between facial expressions and emotions and developed an excellent set of training tools to quickly learn the skills to recognise such connections. NLP calibration exercises teach us how to recognise small changes in skin complexion and color, eye movement and pupil dilation as markers of change of a person base state to emotional state. Observing the people you live and work with is the first most important step to develop empathy.

Explore gently – Once you detect something out of the ordinary (even the most subtle changes are important) you have an opportunity to explore what is really going on by becoming interested in the person in front of you. The most effective way to do so is probably invite them to share their thinking, to do so effectively it will be important to develop the ability of matching your facial expressions to your intentions, showing interest, openness and suspending your own judgment while inspiring psychological safety. Again Paul Ekman’s training tools and NLP calibration exercises can also help you rise such levels of self awareness. Finding the right questions to ask in the appropriate situation is also very important, Judy Barber’s book “Good Question” has been a great insight for me and helped me choose the best questions for the most difficult of situations.

Adjust approach – At this point in time you should have enough information to understand with a degree of precision what emotions the person in front of you is experiencing. You can literally walk in their shoes, and by doing so you will clearly realise what is the best way to approach them, to effectively delegate important tasks, to give effective performance enhancing feedback, to effectively reinforce desirable behaviours and effectively address inappropriate behaviour. The possibilities are endless.  NLP is again a great help in developing and practicing this skill using a technique called “Perceptual Positioning”.

Yes, empathy is a “hard skill” to learn and apply but it is at the core of every human interaction. Empathy is necessary to build healthy and effective relationships with the people we work with, lead and manage, of course it is hard to develop and is not going to get any easier it is only going to get later…

Fabio Grassi is Executive Learning Director at IMI. He is a specialist in the development of team performance, collaboration and motivation.  His approach involves the facilitation of tailored workshops aimed at the achievement of specific business outcomes. He is passionate about the development of ethical leadership through executive coaching. e-mail Fabio Grassi or call on +353 87 9183282

We know that stress inhibits thinking and in particular big picture thinking. When doctors are under stress they are more inclined to miss the unusual diagnosis. Emotions are contagious and people pay attention to the leader to evaluate the situation. And if the leader is panicking….! The same is true for fire-fighters. The leader must have situational awareness and the stress response can hamper this awareness. The ability to remain calm under pressure is the top reason why employees with high emotional intelligence are sought after in the workplace. This quality has been especially valuable over the past few years as many companies have needed to stretch their employees and ask them to do more, consistently.

Employees with high emotional intelligence are also more empathetic. Empathy tends to decline in physicians as they gain seniority. The research shows that this decline starts in Medical School and my own research has borne this out in Ireland. This is worrying as Harvard Medical School research indicates the doctor- patient relationship has great clinical significance, particularly in terms of reducing anxiety. Empathy creates great front line customer service too. Appreciating the customer’s point of view and great listening skills go a long way to disarm difficult customers.

The good news is that emotional intelligence can be dramatically improved with good quality feedback and coaching. Assessment tools, such as the EQ-i from MHS Inc, can offer marvellous insight in this regard. Executives are beginning to acquire a greater level of ease with the concept and practical applications of emotional intelligence and clearly it is set to play an ever increasing role in determining promotions and succession planning.

It is absolutely critical that future leaders in industry and medicine have high emotional intelligence. In industry this is about surviving and thriving, in medicine it may be even more important!

On Tuesday May 14th, IMI welcomes Dr. Steve Stein, globally renowned expert on emotional intelligence, to lead a Masterclass on Unlocking Organisational Power & Performance using Emotional Intelligence.

Pre-booking is essential. For more information please visit our website.

I truly believe that managers are asking the wrong question, what they really want to know is “What is the best way to enable people to perform at their best?”.

Addressing poor performance is indeed difficult and sometimes necessary, yet there is much more potential in developing individual performance and it is this practice that managers should be focusing on.

Individuals perform at their best if they have 3 key ingredients:

1. They need to be motivated to perform.

2. They need to be confident in their ability to perform.

3. They need an opportunity to use their abilities for something that matters.

What I have found is that most managers are either uncomfortable, afraid or unskilled in providing  feedback that will get the best from their people.

The reasons are many: some managers strongly believe that “constructive criticism” is all that’s needed to help an individual to change, others don’t spend enough time observing their people behaviours with the exception of when performance go wrong. Some managers simply feel uncomfortable pinpointing negative traits and loose their people affiliation.

It doesn’t have to be that way! We know from sports that confidence in one’s own abilities is the single most critical attitude in delivering top performance.

We also know from studies in positive psychology and emotional intelligence that for individuals to build confidence they need 5 successes to compensate for each failure.

It seems obvious then that to enable individual performance, managers must reframe the situation from pointing out what’s wrong to reinforce what works.

Of course managers must also be careful not to turn performance-enhancing feedback into the empty doling out of niceties and endless compliments that sound contrived and hold no value.

So how can you get the best from your people? Here are 3 key steps to provide individuals with feedback that will really make a difference to their performance.

1) Provide for specific appreciations. The key words here are “Specific” and “Appreciation”, it is critical to observe individuals behaviours and explain in great detail how such behaviours have contributed to critical objectives and have generate positive outcomes. This step is necessary to build individual confidence and more importantly to reinforce positive behaviours.

2) Use the word “and” to connect sentences. This aspect of feedback is critical as it speaks directly to our neuronal centres. Most often we follow a nice positive feedback with a “but”. This construction is however so common that when we hear too many compliments we are naturally inclined to listen for the “but”. Conversely the conjunction “and” allows the following sentence to build upon the appreciations. “And” reframes what comes next from criticism to confidence.

3) Give a performance boost. This is the most crucial step, while in step 1 and 2 we have laid the foundations to build confidence to perform, step 3 points that confidence in the right direction with laser like precision by:

a. Providing 1 or 2 very specific suggestions that will greatly improve the individual performance.

b. Providing 1 or 2 tried and tested alternative behaviours that will generate even better outcomes.

c. Reinforcing the demonstrated behaviours and confidence by describing the potential outcome they will lead to.

In all three cases it is important to be extremely specific about why each suggestion and behaviour is important and effective and how does it lead to the final outcome.

The key therefore to getting the very best from our people resides in building confidence by reinforcing positive behaviours and directing individual strengths and abilities towards positive outcomes that will benefit both the individuals and our organisations.

Fabio Grassi is Executive Learning Director at IMI. He is a specialist in the development of team performance, collaboration and motivation. His approach involves the facilitation of tailored workshops aimed at the achievement of specific business outcomes. He is passionate about the development of ethical leadership through executive coaching. e-mail Fabio Grassi or call on +353 87 9183282

It is through a combination of excellence in strategic thinking and leadership impact that senior managers in Irish operations have continued to win new mandates from their global headquarters.  The skills and abilities that generate these management successes are not however relevant only to leaders in multinationals.

In an increasingly globalised economy, every senior executive, regardless of the size or focus of the business in which they operate,  needs to cultivate global best-practice capabilities in both strategy and leadership.

 The Numbers – €122.5bn, €19bn, €7.4bn via 260,000

Let me tell you what they mean. In 2012, according to this excellent IDA infographic, 260,000 staff in multinationals (MNCs) in Ireland created 122.5bn in exports, earned 7.4bn in salaries and their organisations spent 19bn in the Irish economy. Of the 145 new investments in Ireland in 2012, 66 were companies who invested for the first time.

To me these numbers tell us two things:

1. The IDA is doing a fantastic job in marketing Ireland abroad, attracting Foreign Direct Investment and, in turn, stimulating our economy

2. MNCs already established on these shores have just as much economic impact as those investing in Ireland for the first time. In fact, according to the figures, around 55% of the 2012 investments came from companies with a presence in Ireland already

The country leadership of our multinationals are doing a great job of growing their global mandate. Why? Well, to begin with, local managers in MNCs have decision-making authority when it comes to issues that impact their business in Ireland. In fact, almost 70% of respondents in Merc Partners’ Executive Expectations survey are of the view that they have significant autonomy to take decisions.

Take, for example, Yahoo!, the global internet search engine. They have grown from a small team with feet on the ground in Dublin since 2003 to a multi-lingual, multi-cultural workforce who earlier this month announced a further 200 jobs for their Dublin HQ. This investment is undoubtedly a vote of confidence in the Irish leadership group and a comment on the country strategy they are pursuing.  There is one cautionary note however. The Merc survey asked what skill gaps are hampering progress at an organisational level; the most frequently cited shortage? Leadership Skills.

Over the past year we have been working with international experts to investigate how  leaders operating in both foreign and Irish-owned multinationals have grown the global footprint of their business.  Our findings have given us a skills blueprint by which all senior managers can enhance their own capabilities and drive growth in their organisations.

Our redesigned Senior Executive Programme  focuses on the two critical pillars of strategy and leadership. It launches on 14^th May and places are at a premium. If you’re interested in discussing whether this programme could drive return on investment for your organisation please contact me at alistair.tosh@imi.ie or +353 (0)1 207 8495

Alistair Tosh is Director of Executive Education at the Irish Management Institute and is a specialist in leadership development. 

It’s a shame, but we often find that managers develop a certain valuable clarity on their organisation only when about to leave a role!

Don’t leave it until you’re changing roles to get the benefit of an aerial view of the organisation.  Here’s 5 ways in which thinking like a management consultant can benefit your role and your business.

1. Be impartial – take an outsiders view of the business – Take time when you can to step outside the day to day – it can stop you chipping away at small issues and help you to see the larger challenges at play.

2. Be investigative – but only spend time tracking down the information that really tells you how the business is performing. Always ask yourself – is getting your hands on this information going to give you you valuable insight into the business – or is simply going to drain your time and that of others? In the longer term, this means setting and tracking the right key performance indicators whether it be for yourself, your department or for the organisation as a whole.

3. Value your own time – we don’t all have the benefit of a set project schedule for our job – once months turns into years it is easy to fall into unproductive habits.  Every now and then think; if you were charging your organisation as a supplier, would you be doing what you are doing now?

4. Ignore company boundaries.. be a channel for good ideas – always be on the lookout for other individuals and organisations for ideas that are relevant to your business.  Open innovation is not the preserve of tech companies – it’s simply about taking from the environment around you that which can benefit your business.

5. ..and finally, treat management as your profession – management is relevant to multiple fields but there are practices and behaviours that drive performance in all.  Stay up to date on the latest management publications relevant to your role. Staying connected to what works and continuously developing your expertise means you will be more likely to leave each organisation better than when you found it.

Eva Maguire is Strategic Projects Manager at IMI, currently leading IMI’s research project into management practices and productivity which seeks to globally benchmark the management of indigenous and multinational organisations operating in Ireland.

image from xkcd

While you may be very proud of it – that really large spreadsheet you’ve been tending to doesn’t quite constitute big data: the term refers to datasets that are so large that they become tricky for standard analytical software and hardware to handle.

The term seems everywhere recently. Why the hype?

Organisations have increasingly begun to set smart algorithms loose on the reams of data generated by web-browsing histories, GPS tracking, sensors and social network messages. This allows behaviour analysis and prediction on a scale never seen before and is why Big Data is set to be big business: the Irish Government’s’ Action Plan for Jobs names it as one of its priority research areas with a dedicated technology centre and commits to make Ireland one of Europe’s leading centres for big data business.

However, while embracing big data undoubtedly brings a need for new technology it is categorically not just an IT issue. It’s a management issue.

The individuals who can harness its power will have “ a deep, wide-ranging curiosity, are innovative, and .. guided by experience as well as data.” according to Rachel Schutt at Google Research.

Companies will increasingly need, not only data scientists, who will work closely to an organisation’s key products and processes rather than in IT functions, but managers who understand both the source and strategic implication of the insights.

In response to the growing need for managers that can really tap into big data to make decisions IMI launched a Diploma in Data Business earlier this month which is aimed at providing managers with the understanding and skills to bridge the divide between data analysis and strategy.

Fundamentally big data is about better management decision-making and those than understand this and can capitalise on it will be in high demand.

Eva Maguire is Strategic Projects Manager at IMI, currently leading IMI’s research project into management practices and productivity which seeks to globally benchmark the management of indigenous and multinational organisations operating in Ireland.