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Can You See the Forest for the Trees?

14 March, 2024 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

waldsterben forest trees

A Broken System Waldsterben is a nasty word. It is a German noun that means “death of the forest.” Trees have been dying across swathes of Germany and central Europe since the 1970s. Leaves and needles fall, and the bark drops off, leaving great tracts of tall, dead stumps. It is a dismal sight and […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: management style, point optimisation, systems thinking, waldsterben

Take Me To Your Leader!

26 July, 2023 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Dalek Leadership

Leadership Versus Management Fashions change, over the past twenty years we have stopped valuing management and started to value leadership. In an effort to promote leadership, businesses around the country have rechristend their “senior management teams” as “senior leadership teams”. I even worked for an organisation that insisted that all managers were called leaders, presumably […]

Filed Under: Blog, Wild Cards Tagged With: human resources, job titles, leadership, management, management style, purpose

We Don’t Need Another Hero

30 March, 2020 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Strange times The world has turned upside down.  We are staggering from crisis to crisis.  The word unprecedented is no longer unprecedented.  I might just punch the next person who uses it. Our plans unravel, we have no idea what the future holds and we don’t have a scooby how it is going to end. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: culture, empowerment, listening, management style

The Management Conundrum

16 March, 2020 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Trust or control? Imagine a scenario where your employees keep on changing things.  All in the name of improvement and innovation.  Everybody is spending time making your organisation run that little bit better.  It sounds great, a management nirvana,  until you realise that they are tinkering with processes, messing with procedures and running roughshod over […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: command and control, compliance, Dilbert, human nature, management style, trust

Are Your Human Resources an Asset or a Liability?

2 September, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Theory X or theory Y? In the 1950’s Douglas McGregor proposed theory X and theory Y.  He suggested that managers see their employees in one of two ways: Either — a cost that needs to be minimised and controlled Or — an asset that should be developed and valued It was an astute observation, but […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: Douglas McGregor, human resources, management style, research, theory X and theory Y

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