How do you approach the professional development of your staff?

Treat your team to a daily 30 minute session over a week, covering a range of topics. Our most popular sessions include:

• That guy is just stupid: Delivering constructive feedback
• I’ll have to do it myself: Delegation as a service
• Really, this again?! Continuous improvement
• What could possibly go wrong? Single points of failure
• Pharmacist or doctor: Identifying the right problem to solve
• What are you working on? Setting the right objectives right
• Who is doing what? Roles and responsibilities
• Defeating busyness: Busy or productive?
• We are not coping here: How to address the capacity problem
• You said we'd get it today: Managing expectations
• That is not what I meant: How to structure clear messages
• I’ve got way too much on my plate: Surviving work-in-progress
• I already told your colleagues! Customer delight
• This is how we’ve always done it: How to introduce changes
• We are data-driven: The impact of the data you don't see

Establish a culture of learning in your organisation by making learning a habit that everyone enjoys and contributes to.

Whether it's a daily knowledge share stand-up, a weekly lunch & learn session, a guild on a specific topic, learning is a legitimate part of work and we can help you find a format, contents and a process that can be embedded into your work routine.

One concept per session, quick and to the point, with real life examples and actionable takeaways that your team can apply immediately.

You might need:

• assistance identifying capabilities and development needs in your team.
• tips on how to align company needs and individual aspirations.   
• advice on how to draft a plan to design and deliver professional development opportunities for everyone.
• support to delineate an onboarding process or an internship programme.

Finding and hiring new talent is just the beginning.

Onboarding them with intent, supporting them to understand your organisation and the way you work, and keeping them engaged are the next steps.

Do not underestimate how different it is to bring someone to a remote or distributed environment. They won't have as many opportunities to shadow others, ask quick questions, learn the implicit ways of working and feel they are in sync.

Very competent, very driven junior staff are often not properly onboarded, they feel lost, guessing what work to do and how, drifting away day after day. By the time someone checks on them, they may have lost the appetite to work with you.

And you have to start all over again.

Your organisation is growing and you are hiring more staff. Who is going to help you lead the teams and manage work?

Are you promoting the right person, with appropriate support?

Or, are you promoting someone:

• who is doing a great technical job... to start looking after a team of people.
• who has been there the longest.
• who is the oldest staff member.
• who demands a pay rise, and you need to justify it somehow.
• who has resigned, and you counteroffer with a promotion.
• who knows the most about your business and customers.
• who shows the most confidence and speaks the loudest.
• who you know is not going to say 'no'.

Common consequences are:

• They end up micromanaging people, and re-doing their work.
• They struggle to delegate and want things done their way.
• They don't exchange feedback, and if they do, it's only unidirectional.
• They think they have to know best.
• Nobody told them that middle management gets so much pressure from the top and from the bottom.
• They want to continue doing their previous work, because that's their comfort zone, and that's what got them promoted, anyway.
• Their team suffers, they don't enjoy their new role, it's a headache all round.
• Engagement plummets, people quit, it's a mess.

This a bootcamp to support team leads-to-be, and recently promoted, first-time team leads. We describe what their next role will look and feel like, anticipate challenges, and provide foundations and tools to make the most of their new role - for everybody's benefit.

Your Leadership team may benefit from having an external pair of eyes that can provide them independent advice that is removed from their day-to-day work.

Someone who gives an impartial opinion and objective criticism without the preconceptions or prejudice that those inside may have.

An advisor who constructively challenges and contributes to the development of strategies, warns and encourages.

We join Leadership teams in small and mid-tier organisations during their monthly and quarterly meetings to provide an external, unbiased point of view that helps them widen their perspectives.