Does your organisation or parts of it feel siloed?

Has this got worse - or better - during the months of WFH?

If so, you can start to change it - or at least take responsibility for the bits that you can influence and change.

Silos are most often created when we only see our needs and perspectives or the purpose and priorities of the organisation are not clear or they’re in conflict.

I often see ‘silo mentality’ in leaders who are hugely loyal to and want the best for their teams so they’re blind to the bigger picture. A kind of ‘we’re right and you’re wrong’ mentality kicks in.

Their intention is often positive but the impact it has is not.

Years ago I worked in a siloed organisation - one part of it working to ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ and the other on providing a quality, exciting, affordable experience for our customers.

Sometimes we were able to do both and it worked brilliantly

But much of the time we didn’t.

And as a business we did some pretty poor things to save money - we definite...

Do you remember an ad some years ago for 02 (other brands are available) called Be more dog?

I‘ve been thinking about this recently because we’ve ‘acquired’ a cat.

Or rather he adopted us - and despite lots of effort to find his owners (no collar, no microchip) nobody is fessing up.

So for the moment he’s ours.

I’ve never owned cats before - I’ve always had dogs (my lovely old border collie Poppy is definitely this woman’s best friend).

I love the difference:

Poppy - love me, stroke me, I’m so happy to see you, unconditional love, wag, wag, wag. I miss you when you’re not here, I want to please you, dependent.

Cat (that’s his name for now) - feed me, I’ll do my own thing thank you very much, indifferent except when I’m hungry or I want to be stroked; I’m the boss. Everything on my terms. Independent, indifferent. ‘Whatever’.

(He’s still lovable of course in his own way).

It’s no wonder we say dogs have owners and cats have staff!

Watching Poppy and Cat reminds me of the work of Michael Grind...

Many people in corporate life tell me they would like to have a stronger influence – particularly at a more senior level. This is one of my ‘most read’ blogs of all time so if you haven’t seen it before, enjoy!

Influence is something we all have – to influence positively is something most of us can develop or get better at. Here are my top ten tips for making a start!

1. Be interested more than ‘interesting’. ‘Receive’ more than you ‘transmit’. Listening is the most under-rated communication skill and yet the most powerful skill we possess if we want to influence other people. How to get better at it? Practise, practise, practise. There’s no magic bullet. And a clutter-free mind helps.

2. It is said that emotion (and story-telling) drives many of the decisions we make. So however much ‘logic’ you might present, I might not be influenced. If you work on the first skill above, you’ll be much clearer on whether I’m being influenced by emotion or logic – or both!

3. Do I want all the d...