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Gower author, Ann Alder, looks at how the creation of REALs (Rich Environments for Active Learning) can provide learning opportunities in almost any situation, culture, organisation and for learners at any level of education, seniority and specialism. In a recent blog post she discusses how this worked on a major World Health Organisation Management Development Programme, designed specifically to support managers responsible for the implementation of the Global Polio Eradication Programme.
Ann is the author of :
Gerald Bradley author of Gower’s Benefit Realisation Management recently conducted a webinar for The International Institute of Business Analysis titled – Benefit Realisation Management: A Practical Guide to Achieving Benefits Through Change. You can take a look at this webinar and other expert offerings from the IIBA at their website.
Gower author and Chartered Business Psychologist Sharon De Mascia has recently been writing and commenting in the press. De Mascia has commented in The Guardian on depression at work and issues of mental health in the workplace. She has also been advising businesses on how they can manage change in these uncertain times.
Sharon De Mascia is a Chartered Business Psychologist and a HR/HRD professional. She has extensive project management experience and is Prince2 qualified as well as being an experienced coach. Sharon has 20 years experience of delivering change management and other organisational initiatives across both public and private sectors. Sharon is an assessor for the British Psychological Society and the Health Professions Council, and an examiner for the International Baccalaureate in Psychology. She is also the Director of ‘Cognoscenti’, a business psychology consultancy. www.cognoscenti.uk.com.
Sharon De Mascia’s book Project Psychology is out this month.
“Innovation is not a process, but an outcome.”
The Forbes Leadership Forum brings renowned speakers and thought leaders who discuss their leadership strategies. As a speaker at the Forum, Gower Author Alexander Manu was interviewed by Shaku Selvakumar for the IBM Impact 2011 Blog. In this interview Manu discusses in-depth the concepts of Imagination and Innovation in business Extract:
The redefinition of innovation as a human behaviour outcome, a dynamic in constant change, requires the shaping of new responses in business and the economy.
The past understanding of what innovation “is”, was generally connected with a breakthrough in technology – some new tool being employed in some new way. This understanding limits the potential of innovation as bound by the tools employed, instead of the imagination employing them. The latent imagination triggered by an innovation outcome is the true goal of innovation. It is not what “I can do with this now”? but “what can I become doing this in the future”? The tool is not a response, but a question. Every innovation is a question. The truly important innovations are a series of questions.
A few definitions: Innovation is an outcome, a new behaviour, a new way of doing things. Disruption is a behavior – an outcome involving a media and a user – changed by invention. Invention is a moment of discovery or creation of something new. Disruptive Business means the sum of new behaviours and their support models. Innovation is a moment of use, a manifest behaviour that engages an innovation object into new uses, and modifies the habitual conditions of the present.
This position challenges the current understanding of innovation, and some of the labels applied to innovation typologies, such as the label “disruptive innovation”. In general, the current discourse around innovation addresses competently the technology side of an invention, at the expense of the motivational side of the user, the human motivation which leads in the behaviour of use.
Alexander Manu is Chief Imaginator and Senior Partner at InnoSpa. He is the author of Distruptive Business: Desire, Innovation and the Re-design of Business published by Gower.
David Hillson (www.risk-doctor.com) will be presenting at the “Making Risk Work” Summit, hosted by Penny Pullan and Ruth Murray-Webster in the week beginning 11 July 2011. This five-day virtual Summit comprises a series of recorded interviews with risk experts. It’s a great way to hear some leading speakers on risk without leaving your home or office. David’s talk covers “Developing sustainable risk management“, discussing some of the main barriers and enablers to making risk management work, and how to maintain energy levels throughout the risk process.
Click here to register in advance for free, or Contact Penny for full details.
David Hillson is Author of Exploiting future Uncertaintly and Managing Risk in Projects, both published by Gower.
Project management may be about control, consistency and structure but it is very important not to forget empathy and reflection in the process. Stakeholder management may be one of the newer mantras to emerge in relation to projects but if we paid it more than unthinking lipservice, you’d think that more projects would be more successful? In their article on PM World Today, Pernille Eskerod and Anna-Lund Jepsen ask the question: what does the project stakeholder value? And in response, they offer four useful perspectives for considering stakeholder needs. Pernille and Anna are authors of the forthcoming Project Stakeholder Management in the Advances in Project Management Series.
Project Zone Network is organising a 2011 Project Zone Summit Series for PM Practitioners across Europe in Budapest, Berlin, Istanbul and Stockholm, each delivering 2 days of networking, learning and understanding the project-driven economy of the post-recession era. 
Gower Author David Hancock (Tame, Messy and Wicked Risk Leadership ) will be speaking in Budapest on April 28th and also as the opening Keynote on June 9th at ProjectRiskZone Vienna .
Dr David Hancock BEng CEng PhD MBA FIMMM FCIPD FRSA is Head of Project Risk at Transport for London and Visiting Fellow, Programme and Project Management at Cranfield School of Management
Further information www.projectzoneworld.com
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I suspect that, for many organizations, the toughest obstacle to culture change and, specifically to engaging employees, are the entrenched myths amongst senior managers. The good news is that, if you can provide the Old Guard with cogent arguments to debunk these myths, at least some of them will thank you for it. John Smythe’s (The CEO: Chief Engagement Officer) company, Engage for Change, articulates these myths very convincingly on their website. Expressing and defining the myth is the first stage towards debunking it so I hope that HR, change and internal comms people will find this list a useful starting point for their campaign.
Not, as you might imagine, a guide to claiming money from the Government, but rather a neat little exercise in assessing how well your organization performs when it comes to realising project and programme benefits. The simple health check on the Sigma UK site is hardly scientific but it does have the advantage of focusing your mind on some of the simple strategic questions you can usefully ask yourself (and others) to get a handle on your organization’s state of health. If you feel you need help then the new edition of Gerald Bradley’s Benefits Realisation Management has been recently published and includes a complete series of full-colour benefit maps.
