Blog

Book Review: The Empty Raincoat – Making Sense of the Future

The book starts by describing 9 paradoxes – are each of them as worthy of consideration in the society of 2012?

Charles Handy wrote ‘The Empty Raincoat’ in 1994, but the predictions are so precise that it could have been published last week.  Here, guest blogger Nick Robeson summarises a book perhaps more relevant today than when it was first published 18 years ago.

Back in 1994 the term ‘digital economy’ had not even been invented, but the changes in our society, our economy, work and our careers were already clear to Handy.  The book starts by describing 9 paradoxes – each of them is worthy of consideration in the society of 2012:…

Team Building Development Programme for a Senior Team (Fresh Tracks Case Study)

The client for this team development programme was a senior leadership team from a company that makes educational toys.

The programme included our unique a large-scale team building exercise, The Team Machine

It’s a fast paced company with recent growth placing increased pressure on the leadership team. We were asked to come up with a leadership development programme that would enable them to:

• spend time together
• get away from daily pressures and distractions of the office
• get to know one another better
• build trust
• create a positive environment in which to work on strategy

A tailored programme was developed to include:…

Top 5 Leadership Faux Pas

There are many ways in which leaders get the best from their teams; likewise there are some common leadership “don’ts” that can stop your team from performing at their best, whatever your leadership style.

Attention to detail is a good quality to possess in many roles but leaders must be able to trust their team to take care of the details while they attend to strategy

Here are our top 5 leadership don’ts:…

Wise Words in Chocolate

The Chocolate Challenge is one of our most popular team building activities, so here are some chocolate quotations. Feel free to share…

Have a great Easter from all at Fresh Tracks

“Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of the pieces” Judith Viorst

“There’s nothing better than a good friend, except a good friend with CHOCOLATE” Linda Grayson, “The Pickwick Papers”…

Get Out, Get Happy

The unexpected March sunshine seemed to lift the mood of the nation. At lunchtimes the parks are filled with usually cooped-up office workers, with some are even relocating their meetings from boardroom to the boardwalk.

Why not try your next team meeting in the park?

Given both anecdotal and scientific evidence about the benefits of sunshine, this is an entirely sensible idea:…

We’ve done change, now what?

Your team’s been restructured, jobs are safe so why aren’t they happy? Here are some tips to help your team move from confusion to certainty:

England Rugby Captain has skippered a transformed team by building trust. “You have to do two things: play your own game, because that’s what got you there in the first place, and trust all the other leaders out there to help you. Trust the guy doing the line-out to do the right thing. Trust the front five.” Chris Robshaw’s pre-match team talk

Integrate New Blood
Very often when people leave and new team members join there’s a loss of momentum. It’s critical to mark the point where the new team begins and the old team is laid to rest. If the start of this new journey isn’t clearly marked then different team members will set out in different directions. The more memorable the occasion the greater the chance of success, so make an event of this ‘new beginning’ – get away from your place of work and spend time getting to know each other….

Two Motivational Forces

The writer and psychotherapist Anthony de Mello writes: ‘Some say there are only two things in the world, love and fear.’

Partnership Overcomes Fear

These two forces drive most behaviour and are commonly used in the workplace to influence others:…

Fearless Leadership – Storytelling

Storytelling is older than the written word. In that sense it is prehistoric. Ever since we noticed one another we have wanted to make contact. This is as true today as it has always been. Be that in the boardroom, the classroom or over the kitchen table.

Quote by John Steinbeck

So why is that ? What does storytelling do that makes it so different from other communication. Simply put, storytelling connects the heart to the head . It takes thinking into feeling and travels imagination into action like nothing else. It can make information engaging and inspiring and it is the seat of positive relationship.In spite of educational norms that extol a cognitive approach to learning, storytelling embraces a more holistic perspective by combining thinking, feeling and doing to inform, engage and inspire….

5 Steps Towards Better Meetings

Our forthcoming seminar on Improving Productivity on the 16th March will give you some tips on getting the most from meetings.

Want your team to perform like champions? Use the pointers below to keep your meetings on track.

In the meantime, here are some quick pointers inspired by a Japanese car manufacturer that has meeting guidelines pinned to the wall of every conference room. Why not paste these meeting guidelines alongside agendas to keep your meetings on track:…

Olympic Tickets Available – at a price

I received an email recently inviting me to buy Prestige Olympic Tickets. It was from a LOCOG accredited source and the tickets were genuine and amongst the best available. But, they come at a price, £7500 for the Opening Ceremony!

To help organisations perform like an Olympic team we've created the 2012 Office Games

It’s unlikely that many of us will be able to justify taking our teams to the games but we should certainly seize the opportunity to replicate the behaviours of world class sports teams in our own work groups….