Posted on

How to improve productivity with design thinking

Your new approach to greater productivity (part 5/5)

Image credit: shutterstock.com | T.Dallas

Image credit: shutterstock.com | T.Dallas

Design thinking is all the rage.  From IBM to AirBnB, to reaching the cover of Harvard Business Review last year, companies are embracing a design-based way of thinking. Design thinking is here to stay and it can improve your productivity. This 5-part series will help you understand and apply design thinking personally and in your organisation.

So how can you implement design thinking into your context?

To become a design thinking leader, you must develop the right stance, tools, experiences and team.

This will not be a seamless journey. I failed several times before starting Coachify and I have failed several times since. I am reminded of Michael Jordan, who said: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Here are the four elements of success.

(more…)

Posted on

How to improve productivity with design thinking

Coachify case study - (part 4/5)

Image credit: shutterstock.com | macgyverhh

Image credit: shutterstock.com | macgyverhh

Design thinking is all the rage.  From IBM to AirBnB, to reaching the cover of Harvard Business Review last year, companies are embracing a design-based way of thinking. Design thinking is here to stay and it can improve your productivity. This 5-part series will help you understand and apply design thinking personally and in your organisation.

Whilst design thinking may seem like a new approach, in reality, it has always been there. It turns out that Coachify is a design thinking firm too. In this post I show how we used Design Thinking to give birth to and nurture Coachify. (more…)

Posted on

How to improve productivity with design thinking

Concept in brief – 3 ways (part 3/5)

Design thinking is all the rage.  From IBM to AirBnB, to reaching the cover of Harvard Business Review last year, companies are embracing a design-based way of thinking. Design thinking is here to stay and it can improve your productivity. This 5-part series will help you understand and apply design thinking personally and in your organisation.

So Design thinking is well rated and highly needed. But what is it? In this post I give three different explanations.

(more…)

Posted on

How to improve productivity with design thinking

Getting personal (part 2/5)

Image credit: shutterstock.com | Dragon Images

Design thinking is all the rage. From IBM to AirBnB, to reaching the cover of Harvard Business Review last year, companies are embracing a design-based way of thinking. Design thinking is here to stay and it can improve your productivity. This 5-part series will help you understand and apply design thinking personally and in your organisation. In this post I share my story of how design thinking helped me become more productive. 

(more…)

Posted on

How to improve productivity with design thinking

Introduction (part 1/5)

Image credit: shutterstock.com | Cienpies Design

Design thinking is all the rage.  From IBM to AirBnB, to reaching the cover of Harvard Business Review last year, companies are embracing a design-based way of thinking. Design thinking is here to stay and it can improve your productivity. This 5-part series will help you understand and apply design thinking personally and in your organisation.

(more…)

Posted on

Trick your performance to the next level

Image credit: shutterstock.com | MaDedee

Last August, I found myself becoming slightly obsessed with my daily food intake. Being the geek that I am, I made the decision to start tracking not just what I was eating, but also other areas of my life to see where I could improve my all-round general health and well being. I decided to track my food intake using MyFitnessPal, my weight and blood pressure using Withings Wifi devices, and my exercise and other metrics using an Apple Watch (see my review here), as well as IFTTT. As a result, I came up with some interesting strategies to improve mental, emotional, physical and spiritual intelligence. What was surprising was that many of these metrics became vastly improved simply just by me measuring them, even before I had implemented any conscious changes.

(more…)

Posted on

Who cares about productivity now?

Image credit: shutterstock.com | macgyverhh

 

Data analytics is the new secret-weapon for the workplace. Businesses want to create, market and track their products and services accurately and effectively.


Practically, anyone who makes, grows and sells anything can use big data analytics to make their manufacturing and production processes more efficient and their marketing more targeted and cost-effective.


So if companies can use big data to transform their performance, why shouldn’t you and I make better use of our personal data?
(more…)

Posted on

3 ways to make the most of good news

I am writing this blog post with a smile on my face, because I just received the news that I have been accredited by the Association for Coaching at the highest level, Master Executive Coach. This required 1500 hours of logged coaching practice, recording my coaching for evaluation, and a 1.5 year process of preparing my portfolio (which ran to 100 pages).

Click image to view my Coach Directory listing

This marks the end of an even longer journey for me. In 2003 when I started my own coaching practice, I considered pursuing an accreditation, but never followed through. Clients weren’t demanding it, and I hadn’t yet realised the centrality of supervision and a reflective approach to great coaching. It took Oxford University’s Said Business School, where I am a member of the coaching community, to prompt me to apply for accreditation. I’m so glad they did, because – as I tell my supervisor Jean Dowson – the process of reflection and supervision has improved my coaching practice significantly.

I’m sure you are happy for me, but why am I telling you this?

(more…)

Posted on

8 ways to stop being an email responder and resume being human

You don’t understand the pressure I’m under to respond to people right away. It never stops. I have to answer 150 e-mails every day. I feel like my job title should be something like ‘email responder’ rather than vice president for strategy. I just have to react and work my way through the list; I don’t have time to think. In fact, all the e-mails are an excuse not to think
– (The Empathic Enterprise, Mark Brown, p78)

Merchant Trask Press (June 2016)

I found this quotation hugely inspirational when I read it in Mark Brown’s book, reviewed here. I sometimes find myself in ’email responder’ mode and I have recently booked onto a training programme called “Time To Think”, that relates to the quotation. The book “Time To Think” by Nancy Kline, is an excellent book I have read in the last year, and has transformed the way I coach others.

(more…)

Posted on

How To Stay Human In A Digital Age

A review of "The Empathic Enterprise: Winning By Staying Human In A Digital Age" by Mark A. Brown

Merchant Trask Press (June 2016)

It feels at times as if we are approaching a tipping point, as if our society is evolving into a mob of Internet-addicted lemmings ready to tumble into an abyss of virtual vulgar rudeness, clutter and digital Taylorism. It saddens and worries me, and that is why I am writing this book.

– (The Empathic Enterprise, p76).

Mark Brown kindly sent me a copy of his book, The Empathic Enterprise. I was inspired by the passion he shows for “daring to stay human in our increasingly digital age” (ibid.), and wanted to review it here. (In the rest of this post, page numbers in brackets refer to the version of the book listed above.)

(more…)