To office or not to office? That is the question.
2020 has witnessed the world’s largest work-from-home (WFH) experiment in history. And now, as countries reopen but Covid-19 remains a threat, organisations are struggling with…
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Managing a Hybrid (Office/Remote) Workforce
Deciding to let employees work either remotely or in the office requires more than just the provision of remote technology. Instead, it will require a…
The story of hand-washing can teach us a lot about prejudice and bias.
The fight against Covid-19 has emphasised the importance of hand-washing, while Black Lives Matter has reminded us that bias and prejudice are still a dangerous…
It’s Not Over Yet: How To Lead as we ‘Return To Office’
I thought it might be helpful to share a number of key findings from a recent return to work survey completed by my colleagues at…
The Big Correction: Business in the Post Covid-19 World
Mike Peckham and James Whitehead Visiting Fellows University of South Wales Business School In just four months COVID 19 has changed the world; from the…
Networks: Ideas, Viruses and Fake News
Networks are currently in the firing line for having spread coronavirus along with all the associated conspiracy theories that are only making matters worse. But…
The Myth of the Heroic Leader
When Mackenzie and Jeff Bezos divorced last year speculation was rife as to how much Mackenzie would receive out of an estimated $136bn fortune. In…
How to do more stuff better in 6 steps (and the first step is too easy)
The end of the year is a time for reflections and resolutions. And not a moment too soon, because the leaders and managers I coach…
We all need a Red Team in our Network
Every day we are bombarded with data. So much that we simply cannot process it all, and even the fraction we can manage is inevitably…
Women Need Two Networks
We know that men are more likely to rise to leadership positions than women. According to a CIPD review of FTSE 100 Companies in 2016…
Fingerspitzengefühl – Have You Got It?
Across organisations and communities there are some leaders who manage to get things done through their sheer ability to understand how the network of individuals…
We need more leaders, but how do we find them?
In a world where things are moving much faster than ever we need more leadership from more places. Where things are more complex, more ambiguous,…
PSA Guide to Leading Your Network
We are delighted to announce the publication of the PSA Guide to Leading Your Network. The Guide is designed for experienced and first time, or…
The Renaissance of the Polymath: And You Could Be One Too
The most exciting things happening in science, technology and business are happening where fields converge – at the intersections and edges. The divisions between formerly…
Kipling, Hotdogs and the Mother of All Cock Ups
It has been said that assumption is the mother of all cock ups. Well it may not be the mother, but it is certainly a…
5 Things Business Can Learn From Social Movements
Business leaders talk about the need for greater collaboration, flexibility and initiative in today’s business environment. Now it seems to me that there are a…
Homophily and propinquity are shaping your organisation… whether you like it or not! Happy with that?
Research indicates that at work more information and knowledge flows through informal social networks than through official organisational hierarchies and structures. This suggests that the…
Networks of Moonshine and Steam
I was working with the Consumer Council for Water this month in the heart of Birmingham. Part of the city centre is a building site…
A personal perspective on Network Leadership and why ‘restless persuasion’ matters, by Mike Peckham
Almost as long as I have been a consultant I have been told that the world is more uncertain, volatile and chaotic than it has…
Networks – How to Exploit Our External Brain
Ethan Deviney was born without a cerebellum. The part of our brain that is found at the back of our head, where our skull curves…
Try a Short Quiz and Learn How to Be More Creative This Christmas!
Below is a short Remote Associates Test, or RAT, which is used to measure a person’s ability to see relationships between seemingly remote ideas and…
Does Your Organisation Hide Social Echo Chambers?
Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter which side of the fence you sit on, we were all surprised by the outcome of the EU referendum…
To team, or not to team, that is the question…
We are social animals. We have hunted and gathered in teams for most of our history. Beside the benefits of sharing the burden of survival…
Lessons from the Valley of Death
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge…
No Plan Survives Contact with Reality: How to Implement Successful Strategies of Imperfection
“All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what…
Why Learning Organisations Fail
The literature on contemporary leadership and management is brimming with exhortations to learn and adapt. Laudable as this approach is, however, it is often flawed.…
What can you learn from Airbnb, Uber and eBay?
Platform business models like Airbnb, Uber, and eBay are upending our conceptions of business, challenging the traditional linear business model as the only the only…
Leadership When Hierarchy Fails
Two seemingly unrelated stories have struck me over the past month: the continuing saga of the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal and the publication of…
Don’t Get Too Comfortable. It’s Not Good For You!
As our website makes clear, we are guided by an understanding that we live in a hyper connected world and that neural networks are like…
Three Simple Questions to Breakdown Organisational Silos
One of the hottest political issues is how ‘open versus closed’ has transcended ‘left versus right’ as the key political division. Those who are ‘open’,…
Forget Leadership, Try Management.
Leadership is sexy, management is boring. Yet how many of us have followed plausible and inspiring leaders who it turns out couldn’t manage their way…
Networks: How to Achieve More with Less
Let’s be clear, we are not talking here about networking for personal ends, collecting business cards, followers on social media, or belonging to a nepotistic…
5 Leadership Skills in the Age of Networks
Informal networks of connection and control have always existed, but often only vaguely understood within tribal pecking orders, neat corporate hierarchies, and military chains of…
A Team’s Not a Team Without Trust
Trust is the confidence among team members that their peer’s intentions are good, and there is no need to be protective or careful around…
Leadership is a balance between power and love
I can’t take the credit for this one and I’m not even sure who can. I found it recently on an untitled word document, among…
Leadership is about Grip: Have you got it?
If management is the science of getting the right people, with the right things, in the right place, at the right time, in order to…
The 3 Secrets of Happiness, Productivity and Innovation
No doubt you’ve heard it all before: the on-demand economy will exacerbate the trend toward enforced self-reliance that has been gathering pace since the 1970s.…
Three Ways to Unlock the Power of Informal Networks in Your Team
Despite what we know about networks and networking organisations still tend to be understood as simple, formal hierarchies, represented by an organisational chart or organogram.…
Four Fatal Flaws of Poor Leadership
We can learn a great deal from good leadership but we can also learn from poor leadership. I’ve been fortunate to have experienced some really…
Leadership Lessons of Field Marshal Slim
I am a strong believer that, human nature being what it is, there is little new under the leadership and management sun. So in our…
Network Leadership – How To Use Networks To Get Things Done
We live in a networked world in which issues and problems, from global warming to terrorism and inequality, flow through webs of connection causing volatility,…
How to increase the flow of new ideas – and eat a lot of hotdogs!
Innovation is critical in a knowledge economy, leading to new products, new methods and hopefully happy customers and organisational growth. According to PwC’s 2015 study…
MBTA ‘Management by Talking About…’
For the first blog of the New Year I’d like to reinvigorate an old idea. MBWA (Management by Walking Around) is rather taken for granted…
Leading Virtual Teams
Virtual teams are increasingly a fact of organisational life, a part of our ever expanding socio-technical system. While many teams operate with ‘mixed modality’, part…
Change Individual Behaviour and Organisational Change Will Follow
Attempts at wholesale cultural change are costly, disruptive and unlikely to succeed. This is because culture rests upon long held ideas, customs, habits and attitudes,…
Leadership Lessons of Lord Nelson
Next month sees the 211th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar (21st October 1805), when twenty-seven British ships of the line, led by Admiral Lord…
Understanding Your Business
Whether you are taking on your first role as a manager, swatting up for a management position interview in a new business, or making the…
Acting Your Way into a New Way of Thinking
Are you struggling to change an individual, your team or your organisation to adopt a new way of doing things? The problem may be that…
Dealing with Conflict: Embracing ‘And/Both’ instead of ‘Either/Or’
The EU referendum offered voters a simple binary decision, ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’, an either/or answer to a hugely complex question. Neither was going to solve…
Thinking on Your Feet
If a bat and ball costs £1.10 and the bat costs a pound more than the ball, how much does the ball cost? If the…
Challenge Your Assumptions
Here’s a challenge for you and a colleague. Get yourselves a large piece of paper (a sheet from a flipchart or a broadsheet newspaper is…
Act Your Way into a Different Way of Thinking
Sheryl Sandberg famously advised women to ‘Lean In’. However, when dealing with difficult tasks and decisions women and men might be better advised to ‘Lean…
Effective Meetings
I am an introvert. That doesn’t mean I’m shy or afraid of what people might think of me: I’ve spent my career standing up in…
Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders
Stakeholder engagement is one of the key aspects of management and inevitably leads to some difficult conversations. The reality of human behaviour means that stakeholders…
Three Kings
Leadership development programmes fail for a number of reasons, but one common mistake is to underestimate people’s resistance to changing their beliefs or behaviour. The…
How the pattern of conversation translates into collective intelligence
This month I want to return to the topic of conversations, in particular the quality of conversations. In his book ‘Social Physics’ Alex Pentland relates…
The Bus to Abilene
In a former life I worked in a big multinational organisation, with colleagues from Europe, America and Australia. We got on very well and felt…
Know the Game
In the run up to the Rugby World Cup I happen to have been doing a lot of work with teams. They have come from…
Making the Most of Yourself
Before becoming a consultant I spent 20 puzzled years in the military. Puzzled, because I was not a natural fit with the military. I was…
Charisma
Sometimes, when delivering a session on leadership, I go back to basics and start by asking what are the traits or qualities of a leader.…
Social Network Analysis (SNA)
Why is it that two football teams whose players have similar abilities can perform very differently? Because performance depends not only on the quality of…
Leadership as Conversation
Leadership as Conversation A few years ago Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind suggested that ‘leadership is a conversation’ (HBR 2012). Given our belief in the…
Enhancing Your Personal Brand
We give a lot of advice to clients about how to enhance their personal brand and get noticed by the people who matter. For us,…
Asking Good Questions
Asking good questions starts with a clear understanding of what you want to know. Broadly speaking, do you want the facts or do you want…
The Power of a Good Question
In January’s blog I wrote that PSA’s role is not to tell, but to ask useful questions that will ignite effective conversation. I would add that it is also our role to help leaders to ask those same questions. We agree with Ian Leslie, the author of ‘Curious’, that those with the ability to ask…
It’s All About The Conversation
There are many websites and self-help books aimed at improving your social skills, turning you from hapless mumbler to magnetic raconteur, this is not one of them. For us, the conversation is not about the superficiality of making a good first impression or introducing yourself at parties. It is quite the opposite. It is about…
Christmas Conversations
It’s Christmas, does your heart sink at the thought of interminable small talk with distant cousins and great aunts? If so, “Let us,” as Mark Twain suggested, “Make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.” By conversation I mean an interaction between two or more people, in…
Why Corporate Social Responsibility is not enough
‘The purpose of business is business’’ Milton Friedman (1962) In the last 20 years income inequality has risen with household wealth of the top 10…
My Generation!
The sad fact is that in the UK and the developed world, we are slowly depopulating ourselves. Birth rates are falling whilst longevity increases; in…