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Do You Believe in Brainstorming?

2 January, 2019 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Conventional wisdom Noun: The generally accepted belief or opinion about a particular matter. Conventional wisdom may be proven to be untrue. Example: It is widely believed that before the voyage of Christopher Colobus most people thought that the world was flat. This is however not true.  The myth of the flat earth Brainstorming What do you do when you need a novel solution? The answer is obvious, you hold a brainstorming session. I’ve been doing them for 30 […]

Filed Under: Blog, Tools & Techniques, Wild Cards Tagged With: beliefs, best practice, brainstorm, dogmatism, innovation

The Frog, the Pig and the Princess

23 December, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Muppet Personality Test

Order or chaos? In 2012 Dahlia Lithwick came up with the ultimate personality test. Forget Myers Briggs and Belbin, the true measure of who you are is the Muppet Test. Lithwick based the Muppet Test on her observation that there are two types of Muppet with two distinct types of personality. The ultimate personality test […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: group think, human nature, innovation, roles and responsibilities, stereotype, teamwork

Who Knows Best?

17 December, 2018 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Learning from others In the 4th century B.C. the Greek historian Herodotus wrote “The Histories”, an account of the Greco-Persian wars.  It was the first time anybody had documented events from existing records. So it earned Herodotus the title “The Father of History”. In it he recounts a story about Darius the Great, King of […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: beliefs, culture, group think, human nature, innovation, learning

Awkward Stakeholders

10 December, 2018 by James Lawther 3 Comments

The interview I interviewed somebody the other day.  I prepared by googling the “Top 10 questions to ask at an interview”.  In at number 4 was the classic awkward stakeholder question.  I tried it out.  This is how it went… Question 1. How do you influence stakeholders? The interviewee jumped up, grabbed a white board […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: colleagues, culture, teamwork

Taking the Sting out of Failure

2 December, 2018 by James Lawther 2 Comments

The failure A couple of years ago I had a workplace nightmare.  I was pushing a big initiative and I needed it to be a success.  I had my boss’s boss on my back and the project was going belly up.  It was all very unpleasant. There were a few rays of light.  A couple […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: Aviation Safety Reporting System, blame, culture, human nature, trust

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