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Cauliflower for Brains

9 August, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Your brain is finite. Your brain is roughly the same size, shape and weight as a cauliflower. There the similarities end. Your brain is — I hope — physiologically more sophisticated than your average brassica. Some people’s brains, like cauliflowers, are bigger and better developed than others. But everybody’s brain, no mater how big or […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: collaboration, colleagues, communication, ignorance, knowledge management, learning, memory, teamwork

Messy by Tim Harford — Book Review

5 August, 2018 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Messy Tim Harford

What is it about? According to the author, Tim Harford, Messy “celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it’s important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead”. According to Maria Konnikova’s New York Times review, “a less catchy, but perhaps more accurate, title for the book would be […]

Filed Under: Blog, Book Tagged With: beliefs, command and control, complexity, innovation, systems thinking, test and learn, Tim Harford

Performance Appraisals Drive Mediocrity

30 July, 2018 by James Lawther 9 Comments

Play to your strengths

It is mid-year If you work in the corporate world that means you have been busy writing appraisals.  If you have never seen one, the standard corporate appraisal form has about 5 sections: Progress Against Objectives — what you did Fit with Competency Framework — how you did it Core Strengths — things you did […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: average, best practice, collaboration, employee performance measures, performance management, sacred cows, wasted intellect

Trial, Error and the God Complex

26 July, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Now I can describe the symptoms of the God complex very, very easily.

TED Talk Tim Harford The “God Complex” is the overwhelming belief that, no matter how complicated the problem, we are infallibly right in our solution. Economist and journalist Tim Harford explains why we are deluding ourself and shows us the only problem solving technique that is guaranteed to work. It’s the Second World War. A German prison […]

Filed Under: Best of the Web, Blog Tagged With: beliefs, complexity, innovation, TED talks, test and learn, Tim Harford, video

Failing to Learn

23 July, 2018 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Flight 1549 On the 15th of January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of canada geese as it was climbing away from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport.  The plane lost all engine power.  The pilots, Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles, were forced to land on the River Hudson off Midtown Manhattan. Boats rescued […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, culture, error proofing, human nature, incentives, learning, reinforcing behaviour

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