Journal Themes
Competitiveness and combativeness can work against persuasion, collaboration, and trust-building - key for both project and change work
A psychological orientation towards status, control, and self-protection may overpower the collaborative instincts that good project management usually requires. A few different bodies of literature speak to this. I wanted to dig further into some of these.
If the market won’t sit still, your business model and offers must be adaptive
The businesses that cope best right now are not the most polished; they are the most responsive. When you build that responsiveness into the way your business functions, uncertainty becomes something you work with, not something that works against you.
Practical prompts to stop playing only to win
If you want to build space for thinking how to change the game, try these prompts in a leadership meeting, planning session, or strategy day. If you are a solopreneur, try them in a journal or a thinking walk.
Different leaders need different things. Here's where I help.
Sometimes that means working with strategy. Sometimes it means working with governance, delivery, readiness, operating models or change. The specific tools vary but the underlying purpose of Wrixle is consistent: helping people to transform ideas into reality.
Examples of a layered revenue architecture by industry
Monetising value at multiple layers is highly protective.
Why I deliberately lead people into ambivalence and encourage them to slow down meaning-making
One of the most counterintuitive things I do when preparing a major change announcement, a team away day, or the launch of a high-risk, uncertain project is I discourage people from reaching a decision too quickly.
Running pilots, trials, proofs of concept
As part of a wider transformation agenda focused on flexible working, a large organisation explored whether tablet devices could become a standard, supported part of its end‑user computing estate
For readiness, start with the decision
Not every project requires readiness management. Every project requires planning, governance and delivery management. Readiness is only needed when the project will culminate in a consequential decision that stakeholders must consciously authorise and then stand behind.
How project accounting adds value
Project accounting offers multiple benefits - across understanding profitability of a specific project, spotting early warning signals, and building a bank of data that, over time, improves pricing and estimating.
How simple changing the game can be
“Changing the game” can sound grand, like inventing a brand new industry but it can be far more practical and specific. Here are just three pretty straight-forward ways to find some Blue Ocean in your world.
Using digital tools well starts with understanding your own Small business
You may not even need a tool. You may simply need to make the best use of the tools you already have. Sometimes the problem is not technological at all. The important thing is that the business need comes first.
Transformation projects have a human undercurrent
When people work on a transformation programme, they are not always just delivering tasks; they may also be living with uncertainty about their role, their team, their managers, their status, their expertise, their workload, and sometimes their future employment.
If you didn’t change, at least a little, where were the passages of a life?
A favoured quote from fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay
Analysis as an input to innovation
“Analysis” has a reputation problem. It is often positioned as the opposite of creativity, something you endure in order to get back to the interesting work. And yet, much meaningful innovation can come from understanding how things actually fit together.