The concept of a first team was developed by Patrick Lencioni and discussed in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The idea is fairly simple, all executives (except perhaps the CEO) belong to two teams, the executive team that they are a member of and the functional team that they lead. The first team concept suggests that your […]
For those who know my Warehouse (TWL) IT story you’ll know that things were a bit bleak in the early days. I had joined TWL from Deloitte with the expectation that as a CIO my role would be to lead a team that would use IT to provide competitive advantage and create value. However, what I found when I arrived […]
I was meeting with a client a few months back. This particular client was having some ongoing issues with the performance of their help desk. Specifically, tickets were not getting closed in a timely fashion and as a result IT’s customer (i.e. users of IT services) were getting some what exasperated (to be polite). The question on the table was […]
I don’t know about you, but I have a series of moments which are burnt on my mind and I can recall them easily and always will. Whether it is the birth of my children, the 1995 World Cup, which I watched with friends in Ngaio, or the turn of the millennium with family at Waikoikoi. Another of these times […]
In the third most popular TED Talk of all time Simon Sinek urges leaders to start with why. Sinek’s message was fairly simple. Great communicators communicate very differently to most people. Whereas most people communicate from the outside in, by describing what they do, great communicators communicate from the inside out by describing why they do what they do. That […]
I had arrived early and took up a seat in a quiet corner of the cafe. I was here for my first coaching session with Roseanne. Roseanne was identified early as a high potential leader within a major corporate IT team. Recently, however, her CIO had noticed a disturbing trend in her performance. Roseanne and her team were missing deadlines […]
Research shows that high levels of engagement are associated with lower staff turnover, high levels of customer satisfaction and superior organisational performance. Conversely a lack of engagement is linked to high staff turnover and poor organisational performance. Because of this link the last decade has seen a significant level of leadership attention on improving employee engagement. Despite this, precious few […]