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Jane Sparrow with be presenting a webinar on Monday 18th March, 2013 at 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM GMT discussing how HR can unlock the value of the middle manager.
Jane believes it is essential that managers have the confidence and capability to be great engagers and this is the only way to truly build and sustain a high performance culture. Within the webinar, she will provide proven and practical strategies for HR Professionals which they can use in order to support their managers and use throughout their organisation.
You can register for the webinar here.
Jane is author of The Culture Builders.
There still seems to be a lot of scepticism surrounding the benefits that flexible working can have on businesses. With new leave regulations and new measures for flexible working being implemented by the government during 2013, this is a step in the right direction, however, it may reinforce sceptical attitudes towards flexible working.
You can read more about this subject by author Andy Lake, who has written a recent blog for HRZone. Simply register your details online for free.
Andy Lake’s book Smart Flexibility is available here, you can also read chapter 1, at your own convenience.
In conjunction with the Association of MBAs, Douglas Board, author of Choosing Leaders and Choosing to Lead will be hosting a free webinar on the topic of ‘Landing your first CEO role’. This webinar is designed for anyone competing now, or over the next 2-4 years, for their first CEO role, or a top tier position in a large organisation. It is relevant to the private, public and voluntary sectors.
This webinar will take place on Tuesday 19th February at 13:00.
The main webpage is here: http://www.mbaworld.com/networkingeventsbydate
You can register here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/836317598
Jane Sparrow’s interview with Bob Garlick in the recent Business Book Talk is a wonderful example of leading by example. If you just listen to how Jane talks about her approach to leading employees, you get an immediate sense of the quality and common sense she distills in her book The Culture Builders. Her focus on the importance of middle managers in making things happen may not be radically new but the pragmatism that she brings to the process of mobilizing them is immediately convincing. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy – particularly with the five distinctive roles that she outlines for middle managers (prophet, storyteller, strategist, coach, pilot) – but then, just maybe there are middle managers out there who are looking for the opportunity to step up to a challenge; to make a difference to their organization and not spend their whole time simply as the bulldogs of business-as-usual.
In a recent article for the Health Service Journal, Douglas Board, author of Choosing Leaders and Choosing to Lead discusses the NHS and how it needs leaders who are curious and ready to take risks - not motivated by fear of failure. Using his expertise within the areas of executive selection and his knowledge of the industry - Douglas offers a thought-provoking insight into the current trends within the NHS today.
You can read Douglas’ article in full, here http://www.hsj.co.uk/5052908.article.
As Iain Adams explains in his recent article on Jane Sparrow’s new book, The Culture Builders, the one subject ‘big bosses’ are asking internal communicators more about these days is how to achieve a high performing culture in the business. Iain praises Jane on her expertise, experience and the valuable information she puts forward in her book; relevant to all communicators in any organisation.
To read Iain’s full article visit http://www.simply-communicate.com/news/book-reviews/building-engagement-one-step-time
I try to avoid falling to the trap of drawing unsubstantiated conclusions from research. That said, the first thing that leapt out at me when I read Sociagility’s ‘Social Media and the City: The FTSE 100 Social Performance Index 2012′ was that of the 2/3rds of large companies whose social performance index was below that of their peers, many of them either seemed uninterested in social media, had a weak social media strategy or were simply unconcerned with direct external public communications. The 38 page research report is available to download from the Sociagility website. Niall Cook, one of the reports’ co-authors is also author of Gower Publishing’s Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work and the, forthcoming, The Social CEO: Why Business Leaders Should Make Time for Social Media.
Stakeholder communication may be a very urgent requirement for every project but Ann Pilkington’s article in Simply Communicate shows why it’s well worth taking a moment to reflect on the resources you have to hand, before you start the communication process. Have you reviewed the project documentation - how it has been structured and what it contains should be fundamental to your approach to communication; have you talked to the right people, asked the right questions and do you understand the context behind the project? I found this article really refreshing because it provides such intuitive lessons for anyone trying to work out the basis for their communication plan … it’s all there, if you take the time to look for it! Ann Pilkington is author of the forthcoming Gower book Communicating Projects.
Lynda Bourne’s article Communicating Upwards for Effect on PM World Journal is a salutary reminder of some of the simplest communication techniques and their potential impact on sponsors and other stakeholders. Big projects are complex enough without confusing people – often those who may not share your native language – with careless expressions or ambiguous figures. Read it, reflect and act. Her advice is bang on. Lynda Bourne is author of Advising Upwards and Stakeholder Relationship Management.
The role of President is generally associated with the ‘leader as hero’ tradition and not with what Douglas Long describes as Third Generation Leadership: “a leadership approach that elicits engagement, commitment, and enhanced personal, group, and organisational accountability”. But maybe, just maybe, Barack Obama is in this new mould. There certainly seems to be an appetite for it as Douglas’ book was the ‘most in demand’ title at the recent Frankfurt Bookfair where we received reading copy requests from companies publishing in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Tukish and Russian.
