Emma Birchall is Head of Research - Future of Work at the Hot Spots Movement.
Here she has the opportunity to convert leading research into practical insights for clients who are looking to find new ways of using technology to drive human capital performance.
She will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 8 October 2015.
IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business - what would they be?
EB: Bring back the trust. They’re human.
IMI: What does this mean?
EB: From collaboration to performance to employee engagement, everything we know about work is changing – but our businesses are seemingly slow to respond. People are more attuned to sharing posts, writing blogs, and providing instant feedback through ‘likes’ and ‘favourites’ than they are to completing surveys, so why does our approach to employee engagement still centre on a set of fixed statements and a rating scale? In their personal lives people collaborate naturally with those around them and have an amazing propensity to share even when there is no immediate benefit to them, hence the success of crowdsourcing sites like Wikipedia. So, why do we spend so much time and energy in organisations on encouraging people to practice these seemingly natural behaviours at work? The challenge for businesses is to disrupt every process and practice in the organisation by asking: Why does it exist? What are we trying to achieve? If we were to start the organisation from scratch, would we choose to create this? And perhaps most tellingly of all, would this practice exist if we trusted our employees?
IMI: Where should we look for further information?
EB: For further information, take a look at the Future of Work website or follow us on Twitter @HspotM: http://www.hotspotsmovement.com/research-institute.html
Source: www.abcgreatpix.com
Emma Birchall is a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 8 October. This event has now reached maximum capacity however if you would like to be added to the waiting list, please email your contact details and company name to conference@imi.ie.
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Sue Cox is a Learning and Development Consultant and a Tango dancer. She has worked extensively with the public and not-for-profit sectors as well as the corporate world and has developed and led social inclusion projects across the UK.
She is interested in how we develop our own potential and how we connect better with others in order to be more effective in our organisations and relationships.
She will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 8 October 2015. IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business - what would they be?
SC: Want better leadership? Develop your followership.
IMI: What does this mean?
SC: Many organisations invest heavily in developing and recognising good leadership but give little or no thought to actively cultivating good followership. Leadership is, by definition, a relational process however there is no leadership unless there is a leader/follower dynamic. When we focus only on developing leadership, we give visibility and importance to one aspect only, neglecting the contribution of followership and the untapped potential of the relationship between the two. How much do we lose by doing so?
A powerful illustration of what this looks like in practice can be seen in Argentine Tango. There is a misconception in Tango that the leader is in control and the follower is relatively passive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tango is complex, improvised and co-created in the moment and it depends entirely on the leader/follower dynamic. Good followership amplifies and strengthens leadership; good leadership maximises the followers’ contribution. The quality of their connection elevates the whole dance to a greater level of performance.
Misconceptions about leadership and followership are seen as often in the boardroom as they are in the ballroom. If you want to release potential in your organisation and be resourceful and creative in the way you respond to change and opportunity, the challenge is to develop everybody’s ability as both leader and follower, so that each can play their full part in co-creating the dance.
IMI: Where should we look for further information?
SC: Visit my website at Ballroom2Boardroom.com
Sue Cox spoke at the IMI National Management Conference on Thursday 8 October. This event has now reached maximum capacity however if you would like to be added to the waiting list, please email your contact details and company name to conference@imi.ie.
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[post_title] => 5 Tips for Motivating Employees
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[post_title] => 3 slick selling techniques you should take from the Time-share Salesperson
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Rory was appointed Creative Director of OgilvyOne in 1997 and ECD in 1998.
He has worked on Amex, BT, Compaq, Microsoft, IBM, BUPA, easyJet, Unilever and won numerous awards along the way.
In 2005 he was appointed Vice Chairman of the Ogilvy & Mather Group UK. He was elected President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising in 2009 for two years.
Rory is also a visiting professor of Warwick University and was recently awarded an honorary doctorate (D. Litt) by Brunel University.
He will be a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference on 8 October 2015. IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business - what would they be?
RS: "Think like a biologist"
IMI: What does this mean?
RS: There is a dangerous tendency for people to look at businesses and markets as though they were pieces of engineering: and should be managed and understood in Newtonian terms. Today more than ever it's more useful - at least most of the time - to use the mental models we use to understand complex and evolving systems.
Source:www.askabiologist.asu.edu
IMI: Where should we look for further information?
RS: A great first place to start is by reading Robert H Frank's book The Economic Naturalist, and his later work The Darwin Economy. Nassim Taleb's Antifragile is a long but mind-reshaping read.
The other areas of worthwhile study are evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics. These seek to understand how (and why) people - often unconsciously - make decisions in reality, and why this may differ from narrow and naive theories of economic rationality.
Where to start here? Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein. And The Rational Animal by Griskevicius and Kenrick.
Sapiens, by Noah Harari, Butterfly Economics by Ormerod, Adapt by Tim Harford and The Origins of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker would also be an essential read.
Rory Sutherland s a keynote speaker at the IMI National Management Conference taking place on Thursday 8 October. This event has now reached maximum capacity however if you would like to be added to the waiting list, please email your contact details and company name to conference@imi.ie.
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[post_content] => With the surge of new computing capabilities afforded to us through cloud computing and data analytics there has been a significant increase in the ability to source, integrate, manage, and deliver data within organisations.
The emergence of a new breed of technologies means that traditional restrictions on data processing have been overcome and the resulting boost to information capacity means that all organisations can become more agile, flexible, lean and efficient
The term Intelligent Enterprise is being used to describe those that seizing the opportunities presented.
This has led to a demand for people that can make this “Intelligent Enterprise” a reality.
The bottom line is that without the right skills and capabilities, new technological innovations will not only be of no benefit to firms but may actually become a disadvantage to those that are unprepared to implement them.
Indeed, staffing and skills have been singled out by firms as the top barrier to Agile Data Analytics, with 61% of respondents citing them as a challenge in our recent report for the Cutter Consortium.
So what can organisations do to become Intelligent Enterprises and get the most from big data? We believe they need to develop three main skill bases:
1. Technology support
2. A deep analytical capability
3. A savvy understanding of what big data can deliver
Organisations will increasingly be employing not only Data Miners, Data Scientists, Data Architects, Database Administrators Business Developers and Business Analysts but those individuals that combine skills from those roles such as Project Managers, Data Visulalisers and Programmers Developers.
[caption id="" style="float:center" width="300"] The Intelligent Enterprise - mapping skills and roles[/caption]
At the centre of the skills bases are the Chief Information Officers (CIO) and Chief Data Offers (CDO) that will drive the transformation.
With a skill set that covers all three categories, individuals are ideally placed to successfully lead their organisation into an era of extracting tangible value which is currently hidden in organisational data. It is from this perspective that we have designed the IMI Diploma in Data Business, which provides knowledge and insight into each to three areas.
To find out more about how you can develop these skills come to our Information Evening for our Diploma in Data Business and Diploma Cloud Strategy in the Marker Hotel, Dublin 2, at 6pm on Tuesday 10th September register here.
Tadhg Nagle is joint Programme Director of the UCC IMI Diploma in Data Business and a lecturer and researcher in Information Systems at University College Cork. With a background in financial services his expertise is in strategic innovation and emerging and disruptive technologies.
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[post_title] => Agility: elusive, but essential and the key to thinking differently
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William Corless
17th Sep 2019
William is an associate faculty member and programme director in the IMI.
Related Articles
"Bring back the trust. They’re human" Six Word Wisdom from Emma Birchall
"Want better leadership? Develop your followership" Six Word Wisdom from Sue Cox
5 Tips for Motivating Employees
3 slick selling techniques you should take from the Time-share Salesperson
"Think like a biologist" Six Word Wisdom from Rory Sutherland
3 critical skills to develop if you want to work for the Intelligent Enterprise
Agility: elusive, but essential and the key to thinking differently
In the Pursuit of Excellence: The Truth about Receiving Feedback
Feedback is still one of the major struggles that exist in all organisations. Many managers avoid giving feedback or procrastinate on annual performance reviews due to the fear of the fall out of the conversation. In Ireland, we tend to be mainly indirect when giving feedback and swing to the opposite side of the pendulum to be too direct.
Being faculty on the High Impact leadership programme has provided me with some insights which are useful to share. I wrote this article for those who are ambitious and want to fulfil their potential. People often avoid getting feedback out of fear for what they may hear. On the other hand people ask for feedback and are unable to handle it. So the challenge is to understand how do we overcome these difficulties, especially if we personalise the feedback and it hurts our feelings.
Firstly, it is really important to understand the importance of feedback to you. Many people will have blind spots and area’s to develop. The ways to overcome this are through receiving feedback, coaching or shared discovery like group work or using psychometric tools. The higher your self-awareness the higher your emotional intelligence will become.
Research shows that 90% of top performers have higher emotional intelligence and are far more likely to be more productive in their roles, have increased career promotions and higher salaries. Emotional intelligence is responsible for 58% of your job performance. (Source: Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greave). The role of emotional intelligence is therefore crucial to your career and receiving feedback is an integral part of the development process.
Many people react in different ways when they receive feedback. Firstly, they may go into defence mode and under an amygdala hijack shut down and refute the message be delivered. Secondly, some people may only listen and acknowledge the nice things, which is the danger of the feedback sandwich, (start nice, deliver tough message and finish with something nice). This of course could be a coping mechanism. Thirdly, people can personalise the message as it attacks their ego or self-identity. This rocks their confidence.
People often avoid getting feedback out of fear for what they may hear. (Photo source)
Being able to listen and unlock the message that is being provided in the feedback conversation is key to high performance.The lessons that I have learned from working with clients in an executive coaching platform or in group facilitation on a programme such as High Impact Leadership are as follows:
• See the feedback conversation as a learning conversation. You are learning about yourself, about others expectations/ preferences, ways to improve your skills and enhance your emotional intelligence.
• Recognise that if people are confident to give you feedback that there is a positive intention behind the message. Usually, people want you to fulfil your potential.
• Is the feedback true and objective. Seek out people that you trust will be honest with you. Follow the rule of thumb: If the overall majority agree there is something to work on, there must be something in the message for you to work on.
• Understand the reasons behind your defensiveness. Understanding triggers and why you may have a strong reaction to the feedback. Working with a coach could help you with this.
• Realise, that if you tend to personalise feedback. Take time to process the feedback and wait for the emotions to settle.
• If you know you are sensitive to feedback, prepare yourself for this. Stay objective and ask for a follow up meeting so that you can process the information and have a productive conversation.
• Seek specific feedback and gain clarity on details and expectations so you can make a development plan.
• See your development plan as a challenge. Set goals to achieve this and before you know it you will be in a success spiral towards personal success.
Remember, feedback is essential to high performance. If you are in the pursuit of excellence, the only way to learn is through finding ways to improve. Whether you are a pro golfer, an Olympic athlete or a six nations grand slam winner feedback and analysis of your performance is crucial to your personal success. To further your own career check out the High Impact Leadership programme in the IMI.
William Corless is an executive coach, certified mediator and corporate trainer who works with C-suite leaders across a wide range of industries both nationally and internationally. William is an associate faculty member and programme director in the IMI, a guest lecturer with Notre Dame University. Most recently, William has continued his education studying Leadership in Harvard, High performance teams in the University of Chicago, Organisational Behaviour in the London School of Economics, Intercultural Management with Notre Dame and Negotiation in NUI Galway.