Motivation at work – the basic needs for a more productive team

To get a more productive team, you need an understanding of motivation at work.

This video explores the basic needs of a more productive team and how more effective motivation can help you achieve it with your team.

For more on motivation, watch this video:

How to Handle Politics in the Workplace

Every organisation suffers from politics in the workplace; it’s how things get done; influencing, cajoling and getting stuff done means we need to know how to handle politics in the workplace.

In this video, we share a useful, practical model from Baddeley and James; their work uses animals to describe political behaviours. The Fox, the Owl, the Sheep and the Donkey. You will learn how to spot politics in the workplace, and working with political animals is essential if you are to get things done and navigate your way through everyday business life.

Check out our most downloaded article:

Why do people underperform in Sales (and other roles)? Part 2 – Skills

People underperform in sales (and other roles) for several reasons, in this podcast we will explore the skills aspect of the role.   

Sales can be easier than other roles to spot when people underperform given the metrics available but identifying the factors behind underperformance is not so easy.   

What do we mean by skills?  It may sound obvious; in our experience, it’s not, which is why Mark Davies and Ricky Muddimer explore the topic in more detail and what we mean by skills and why looking at skills more broadly is so important.

12 Signs Your Culture is Broken

A quick run-through of 12 signs your culture is broken. Culture is the single biggest factor in your success, a broken culture will have a dramatic impact on productivity and results.

Peter Drucker once said “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

We have broken the 12 signs down into these four bite-size videos; you will find three in each. The first three signs of a broken culture deal with misalignment, self-interest, and focusing on the wrong stuff. Each of the 12 signs is supported with a question or two to help you think about improving your culture.

We’d love to hear which one you’re facing right now and what impact it is having.

For more on our take on organisational culture, check out the Culture Blueprint

Related Content

If you prefer to listen, here are a couple of podcasts:

Do you know how much Change is costing your business?

The cost of business change is huge!

An HBR article suggests that 70% of change fails to achieve its intended outcomes.

Of course, change is a cost; the question is – when we embark on change, do we help our people to come on the journey, or do we add to the cost by creating disengagement – a sense of unfairness, lack of control, build-up of resistance, these all add up to a hidden cost of change, that will never appear on your balance sheet. You are losing valuable time that will escalate if not managed correctly. What’s your cost of change, and more importantly, what’s your cost of doing nothing?

How much is your current or most recent change costing you?

Add your numbers to the calculator to determine how much change has cost you so far and how much it will cost if it goes unresolved:

Cost of Change Calculator

Cost of Change Calculator

This is not a scientific calculation, just a quick indicator. It may not be the total you arrive at, but it won’t be zero either; your instinct and judgment will tell you where you believe it to be on the scale.

Want to talk about how to reduce your cost of change?

When you’ve worked out the cost of change for your business, call us, and we’ll help you cut the cost whilst engaging your people as you go. Download the Change Blueprint for our take on organisational change and how you take people on the journey.

Related Content

How to think Creatively

Creative thinking techniques and tools for success

Tune in if you want creative thinking techniques and tools for success.

If you want to boost your creative thinking to help you solve problems and achieve smart goals, then we probably have the simplest and most effective creative thinking tool!

Creative thinking is an essential skill, whether you are working on a project, pursuing a personal smart goal, or solving a problem. It is about thinking differently and getting outside the box.

The secret to this comes with three key components

  1. Context, a focus or a problem statement. Of course, it could be all three.
  2. Purpose – reason to want to do something about it.
  3. Imagination comes from asking the right questions, and for this, you need context and purpose.

O ideas is one of our most powerful mental models, tools, or techniques, depending on how you want to describe it.

O ideas provide a cognitive shortcut. We’ve taken some of the most commonly asked questions when problem-solving, goal-setting or tackling a project.

The principles are consistent. So to save time and make people more effective and productive, we created o ideas to help.

Creativity is about asking the right questions and freeing your mind to allow it to find solutions, but creative thinking is not about judgment, qualifying and committing. Not yet, at least.

First, open your mind, explore the superhighway of your imagination, and wander through the after of the possible.

We have many critical thinking tools (check the link) to use after, but only after you’ve wandered into the creative sphere ( yes, I made that up), but it is a real place we all have tucked away in our brains.

Downloadable Templates

What to do When SMART Goals Don’t Work

Try the Benchmark Method

New Year’s resolutions will be on the minds of lots of people; if that’s the case, if you’re serious, you need to get goal setting.

A lot of the time, New Year’s resolutions focus on feelings and confidence, and SMART goals don’t work for something subjective, not until now, that is. SMART goals are great for goal setting, when you know how to set goals using SMART they’re awesome, but what do you do when the subject of your goal is a feeling, a perception or a judgement, something subjective, well we have the perfect solution with benchmark goal setting.

You can take something that is hard to measure and turn it into something that will work with a SMART goal. SMART goals are essential to the Thinking Focus Toolkit for Team Leaders and Managers.

Thinking Focus Toolkit

SMART goals; are you doing them right?

Need to define Smart goals? – before you do, are you doing them right? if you want to achieve what you want that is!

Smart goal-setting works, which is probably why no one has managed to reinvent them. Smart goals are the staple diet for team leaders, managers and leaders. Without smart goals, you have no idea what you’re working on, what your people are working on, or what your organisation is working on. Your future is at risk and left to chance.

In this video, Graham walks you through the smart goals process and gives a practical example. We also shared why we think most are getting it wrong, at least the order that is.

Thinking Focus Toolkit

How to Define More Robust Goals

SMART – What each letter really means!

The SMART goals technique is arguably the most well-known of all goal-setting techniques. How to set goals is really important if you want to be more productive, have success, and ultimately achieve your goals.

The acronym S.M.A.R.T. is well used across the world. But knowing what it stands for is only the start, you need to understand the individual components to make it work for you and improve your productivity and effectiveness.

Anyone can set a goal, but if it ain’t specific, you’re saying you don’t care what you achieve or if you achieve it. Denzel Washington said, “Dreams without goals are just dreams”.

So if it’s important to you and you want it, get specific and go for it. In this video, we explore the types of measures and how to make them work for you. SMART goals are essential to the Thinking Focus Toolkit for Team Leaders and Managers. Watch this video to find out.

Thinking Focus Toolkit

How to think different and get unstuck!

We are all subject to the insanity loop from time to time, that feeling when we seem to keep doing the same thing yet expecting a different result.

We get stuck! To get unstuck, we need to change our thinking; in this video, we explore why you get stuck and offer three easy ways to free yourself from Einstein’s insanity loop. Thinking skills are essential to the Thinking Focus Toolkit for Team Leaders and Managers.

Thinking Focus Toolkit