The Team Building Blog

The idea that staff set their own pay, come and go from the office as they please, all within a business that has no written strategy sounds like a recipe for disaster. Not the story of a company that’s gone from $4m to $160m.

Is this man a management genius?

Semco is no ordinary workplace, despite the fact that it operates in an industry as ordinary as engineering. Read the rest of this entry »

If I think back to when I’ve seen people most stressed in my working life, the majority of instances were immediately before and during conferences.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs...

Very often it’s not the speakers who’s nerves are showing or the AV technicians that are flustered, its the conference organiser.  These people know they are in the firing line if the lights go out or the timmings go aray.  They can often be heard to say “My job is on the line if this isn’t a success”.  Leaving unfair dismissal to one side the truth is there is little benefit in allowing the strain to show.

Earlier this week I was part of a live TV show in which the decision was made to rebuild the set 45 minutes before going on air, while rehearsals were still underway and the lighting and camera angles were far from set up.  Additionally the script was being adapted requiring changes to the autocue and the need to re-brief the presenter and guests. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s generally accepted that team based working is preferable to individuals serving a single line manager, but what evidence supports this?

Sometimes being in a team can be very helpful.

Team based working gained popularity during the late 80s and 90s following initiatives such as kaizen and Total Quality Management. All too often we simply accept that the team way is the right way, but perhaps we should spend a moment testing this assumption.

Firstly, it’s worth considering different kinds of teams that can exist within an organisation; Read the rest of this entry »

Meetings can take up a large portion of anyone’s working day and for many of us, demands on time in the office are already high. So in an ideal world every meeting should count, with specific objectives and results making the time invested worthwhile. 

Allowing conflict to get out of control = chaos

All too often though, meetings – even during and afterwards – are perceived as a waste of time by those invited. This can usually be attributed to a lack of understanding about what the meeting was for. To avoid the sense that it was all worthless, here is a list of ten reasons why meetings can fail for you to use as a checklist when planning your next meeting:

1.      No agenda = no purpose
2.      No advance communication = surprising behaviours/responses
3.      Not encouraging participation = no interaction
4.      No time management = cost to organisation – time is money
5.      Allowing conflict to get out of control = chaos
6.      Not reaching consensus = waste of time and company resources
7.      Allowing sub meetings = no focus or direction
8.      Not controlling difficult behaviour = everyone becoming difficult
9.      Not summarising actions = misunderstanding of next steps
10.  Not motivational = attendees leave feeling flat and despondent

This list is based on an article written by Nuggets of Learning and Development.