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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

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

The Puzzle of Motivation

3 September, 2018 by James Lawther 1 Comment

who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach.

TED Talk Dan Pink Improving employee performance is as easy as 1, 2, 3: Write an objective Define a metric Provide an incentive Then set people off to hit the goal.  It is just a question of building motivation. In his entertaining TED talk Dan Pink explains why this approach destroys motivation  instead of creating […]

Filed Under: Best of the Web, Blog Tagged With: beliefs, command and control, Daniel Pink, human nature, incentives, motivation, performance management, targets, video

Research: To Be a Good Leader, Start By Being a Good Follower

12 August, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Harvard Business Review Kim Peters and Alex Haslam Who does the best job of finding good leaders? Assessors: managers, recruiters and trainers.  People whose job it is to find and promote talent. Leaders: the person themselves. Individuals who are convinced that they have what it takes. Followers: the team who have to work for the leader. The […]

Filed Under: Best of the Web, Blog Tagged With: beliefs, human nature, leadership, 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

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