Creativity

Let Creative Ideas Surface

I was talking to someone earlier today about creativity and the need for creative ideas to drive innovation to enable us to solve difficult problems like climate change and achieving the SDG goals.. I was surprised when he said, that he was not the creative type and that he finds it really difficult to come up with creative ideas and so avoids participating in brainstorming sessions.. I strongly and fully believe that we are all born creative and “Deep inside us, creative ideas are already there! We just need to let them surface!” Mukesh Gupta This requires us to be […]

Leadership

Leadership and Responsibility

In a recent article,  Pia Lauritzen shared her insights on how leaders can create a sense of responsibility across their organisation. The key insight is that they can do so by smart use of questions – questions that shift the responsibility from them “Me” (self) to “You” (individual) to “Us”. I think she is on to something here. Taking all the responsibility on ourselves makes us feel like a hero or a martyr but doesnt necessarily help us achieve what we set out to. Making our employees responsible for the results questions the role we play and how we contribute […]

Leadership

Always be Recruiting

One of our primary responsibilities as leaders is to assemble the best team possible to achieve the results that we want to achieve as a team. This means that we are constantly looking to figure out what kind of person can elevate the performance of the team as a whole. Once we understand this, we can then be always on the lookout for the talent that we need. You will be surprised how you can find the right talent in all the potentially wrong places or places where we are not looking. The key here is that we are always […]

Leadership

The Law of the Loaf

One of the responsibilities of leaders is to organise our people and create contexts within which they operate. This context has a significant impact on the results that the teams can achieve. One way we put in place these contexts is through the culture we operate under (intentionally or unintentionally). And this decides how we interact with each other – as one entity moving toward the goal or as individuals working on each our own goals. It is fairly evident that we are much more effective when we are all working towards a common shared goal. So, the question is […]