I came across a webinar last week called: “9 Speaking Strategies that Drive Team & Learner Engagement Up 75%.” It promised to help people control their voices, choose better words, adapt to any listener, appear more confident and improve their speaking style. All in an hour. Now, some of the techniques may be useful –… Read More Number jumble
Yesterday I listed a few reasons why performance slips that have nothing to do with skill. Time, clarity, process, tools, and mixed signals from above. All real and all ignored in favour of “send them on a course.” Underneath all six is one question that decides everything else: can this person do the thing, or… Read More First principles
Stop calling every performance problem a skills gap. It’s the easiest diagnosis – someone says something inappropriate, put them on a diversity course. Regularly late? A timekeeping course. Job done, box ticked, and budget spent. Except most of the time it isn’t a skills gap at all. Ask a manager why their team keeps missing… Read More Not a gap
Course requests often arrive after the diagnosis has been skipped. A workshop request rarely turns up as an open question but arrives with a solution already attached: a course; a target audience; a format and duration; and sometimes even a supplier. What is usually missing is the diagnosis that would justify any of it. The… Read More Course Before Cause
I was listening to Christopher Nolan discuss the process of writing and directing The Odyssey. When asked whether he had written Matt Damon’s part with the actor in mind, Nolan said: “Part of my writing process is to not ever think about actors while I’m writing.” His reasoning was that thinking about a familiar actor… Read More Performance not persona