With a sharp fall in the PMI raising the potential for recession in the UK and a report that US employers announced 75,151 lay-offs in August, the highest level since 2020, it is understandable that people are anxious and concerned about the future.    In her article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Liz Fosslien writes […]

With the news that the UK has the lowest export growth in the G7 other than Japan, it is clear that UK business is suffering. This situation is confirmed by PwC’s CEO survey which found that 22% of UK CEOs believed that their current business model will not survive to 2030. PwC identify a wide […]

There is an argument voiced numerous times by prominent people, some notable, some notorious, that creativity and productivity are impacted when workers work at home alone rather than together in an office environment. I have heard the same argument from a close colleague, for whom I have the deepest respect, even though two of the […]

This paper has not been written as an attack on [organisational] consulting practices, but it does make a strong case to suggest that some activities such as the cliché of ’30 graduates crawling over a company with their clipboards’ is now so ‘analogue’ as to be in the throes of redundancy. On a positive note […]

Timing, timing, timing! There has never been a better time to challenge the staid, outdated and outmoded forms of information gathering and dissemination in organisations, for which we offer a genuinely unique solution, based upon mimicking the science of sensemaking in the construction of our Organisational Sensemaking TM diagnostic.   Throughout the world organisations have received […]

As someone who has experienced working in an office, working from home and hybrid working, I have no particular axe to grind about whether employees should return to the office or hold out for a more flexible working arrangement. Each way of working has its own advantages and disadvantages which have been detailed in many […]

In her meticulous annual review of workplace trends, Jeanne Meister identifies mostly positive changes for employees in 2023 including more inclusive caring behaviour by companies and provision of schemes to support hybrid working, from collaboration to learning. On hybrid learning, Meister quotes Vincent Maurin, e-Academy lead at Arcelor Mittal, who says, “We are envisioning pop-up […]

The outlook in 2023 for the British economy and hence many British companies is grim. Stagflation, the combination of high inflation and persistent low growth, has returned to the UK. As Tony Danker, director-general of the CBI. puts it – “Britain is in stagflation—with rocketing inflation, negative growth, falling productivity and business investment.” Ian Stewart, […]

‘Given that the commercial environment is awash with risk and uncertainty, few leaders will want to trust important resourcing and investment decisions to gut instinct. Indeed, risk management may be the top priority in times of crisis, but what if business leaders could avoid the crisis in the first place?’  The contention in this piece is […]