Team

Best practice
Reading Time: 8 minutesBest practice offers evidence that an idea can work, but what it cannot prove is that the same approach will work in the same way inside a different organisation. Few leadership teams deliberately choose a poor solution. When an organisation needs to improve performance, reduce risk or deliver change, adopting [...]

Why Best Practice Fails When Business Context Is Ignored

Growth Confidence
Reading Time: 7 minutesGrowth plans often begin the year with confidence. The targets have been agreed. The pipeline has been reviewed. The roadmap has been presented. The board pack looks credible. Everyone understands the direction of travel. However, confidence is not the same as evidence. Bain’s 2026 B2B Growth Agenda highlights the problem [...]

When Growth Confidence Outruns Commercial Reality

+1% Culture
Reading Time: 6 minutesThere is a persistent belief in modern organisations that meaningful performance requires a dramatic intervention. A transformation programme.A system replacement.A strategic reset.A cultural overhaul. Boards often wait for the moment when a bold initiative will propel the organisation forward. Yet when you study consistently successful businesses, a different pattern emerges [...]

Don’t Wait for the Big Fix — Build a +1% ...

Leadership Questions
Reading Time: 6 minutesIf your executive team feels aligned, but there is something not quite right, ask yourself these leadership questions, starting with this one: When was the last time you disagreed properly about something that mattered? Many leadership teams mistake calm meetings, polite agreement, and steady activity for alignment. In reality, avoidance [...]

10 Leadership Questions that Executive Teams Avoid

Sustain - SUCCESS Framework 2
Reading Time: 5 minutesKeeping Growth Alive After the Excitement Fades with Sustain Every transformation begins with energy. The first workshops spark new thinking.The new rhythm feels refreshing.Teams experience early wins.Leadership sees movement.Confidence spreads. And then — slowly, quietly — reality returns. People get busy.Priorities multiply.Operational pressure reasserts itself.Urgency shifts.Enthusiasm fades into routine.Routine fades [...]

Sustain – SUCCESS Framework

Executable Plan 1
Reading Time: 5 minutesTurning Customer Truth Into Coordinated Movement The Executable Plan is the discipline that stops Account-Based Growth from becoming a well-framed intention rather than a lived organisational behaviour. It is the point in the SUCCESS framework where understanding becomes movement — where strategy gains a pulse. There is a dangerous moment [...]

Building an Executable Plan – SUCCESS Framework

SUCCESS Framework 3
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhere Growth Becomes a Leadership Discipline Most growth initiatives don’t collapse because the model was wrong. They collapse because the rhythm is lost. A small misalignment here, a missed review there. A decision made on assumption. A customer insight diluted. A Heatmap ignored. A success plan left to gather dust. [...]

The SUCCESS Framework Series

Leadership Alignment
Reading Time: 5 minutesOrganisations rarely break at the bottom. They fracture at the top. Leadership alignment is key to recovery. Misalignment inside a leadership team isn’t dramatic at first. It begins quietly, in the background: different interpretations of the same data, different definitions of success, meetings where people nod but leave with different [...]

Leadership Alignment – Where Recovery Takes Root

Digital Handoffs
Reading Time: 5 minutesDigital Handoffs: The Delivery Paradox While digital projects celebrate on-time delivery, we find the real threat to success lies in the handoffs—the critical transitions between teams where intent is diluted, context is lost, and the promised business value quietly leaks away. 70% of digital transformations fail to meet their objectives [...]

Digital Handoffs: Where Value is Lost

A to Z of Culture and Collaboration
Reading Time: 6 minutes26 leadership behaviours that turn strategy into execution Introduction: The Invisible Advantage Strategy might set the direction, but culture and collaboration sets the speed. Every leader knows the strategic map, but few measure the invisible friction that dictates execution speed. In today’s complex world — marked by hybrid workforces, cross-functional [...]

The A to Z of Culture and Collaboration

Purpose-driven Projects
Reading Time: 9 minutesPurpose-Driven Projects – Yes the what and the how are important, but what’s often missing is the why. Most organisations measure project success with the familiar three: time, cost, and scope (sometimes quality is added too). Deliver to budget, hit the dates, and stay within scope — and on paper, [...]

Purpose-Driven Projects: Why Mission Matters as Much as Milestones

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhy even the best proposition underperforms when your teams aren’t pulling in the same direction — and how to fix it. We Know What We Do. So Why Isn’t It Landing? You’ve got a strong product or service. You’ve invested in development.The customer results are great. And yet… Sales aren’t [...]

Your Proposition Isn’t the Problem — Your Alignment Is

communication and collaboration 1
Reading Time: 6 minutesIn part 2 of this four part series of blogs, I covered the importance of PACE to improve organisational effectiveness and speed and specifically Alignment: PACE = Planning + Alignment + Communication + Execution The third part of The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation will focus on Communication of your [...]

The Need for Speed ~ Driving Pace in Your Organisation ...

Teamwork 3
Reading Time: 7 minutesTrue teamwork promotes individual and collective performance. Powerful teams value listening and communicating, sharing work responsibilities, provide support and can even make work more social and enjoyable. Team members are supportive of one another and recognise the interests and achievements of each other. I would go one step further and [...]

Creating Powerful Teams

Keep People Inspired 2
Reading Time: 4 minutesBusiness is all about measurement. Peter Drucker’s quote – “What gets measured gets managed” is never more true than in today’s tough economic climate. The use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are at the heart of most high performing businesses. However, there is often one important KPI missing,  and that is [...]

THE Key Performance Indicator – Keep People Inspired

Dodo
Reading Time: 4 minutesWith today’s rapidly evolving technology and business markets in their most challenging time for decades, companies rise and fall faster than ever before. Leaders must constantly anticipate the market and their customer needs and that sometimes means you need to make changes – be that processes, products, organisational structure, or even the [...]

Dead as a Dodo…..Why Teams Don’t / Won’t Change

The Collaborator 3
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn the world of social media and ‘crowd-sourcing’, surely The Collaborator is the best leadership style for our times? The Collaborator is a very open and collective leader in running a team. Ideas move freely amongst the group and are discussed openly. Everyone is given a seat at the table, [...]

The Collaborator – Leadership Styles ~ Part 4

Coaching Team 3
Reading Time: 4 minutesWelcome to Part 2 of Leadership Styles: The Coach Author, educator, and motivational speaker, Dr. William Arthur Ward wrote a phrase that I try to remember. It gives me personal strength to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing – ‘The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. [...]

The Coach ~ Leadership Styles – Part 2

Leader Terminator 7
Reading Time: 3 minutesLeadership style is something I’ve been pondering for a while now. I’ve been lucky to have met and worked with many great leaders over my career and I’ve also met and worked for some that, shall we say, could have done with some development and coaching. I don’t like putting people into [...]

The Terminator ~ Leadership Styles – Part 1

Word Cloud - Elephant in the Room 3
Reading Time: 7 minutesI see two distinct types of ‘Elephant’ in my line of work…and two ways of tackling them. The Management Elephant and the Leadership Elephant. This blog focusses on the latter. If you missed Part 1 – An Elephant in the Room: Management breakthroughs, and are wondering what on earth I’m [...]

An Elephant in the Room Part 2 – Leadership Breakthroughs

Listen to your People
Reading Time: 3 minutesFor a while now I’ve worked with developing my direct team into being more… More focused, more passionate, delivering more and being more commercially and customer focused. And to a large degree we’ve succeeded. I’m really proud of them and what we’ve achieved so far. But to really succeed and make a step change in our [...]

Stop listening …. and give up!

Mark Conway 1
Reading Time: 5 minutesThanks to those of you who took the time to complete the recent Top Leadership Challenges poll. The top 3 challenges as voted for by Think Oak! readers are: 1. Creating a high performance culture How leaders believe things should get done is a key driver of culture. Leaders establish [...]

Top Leadership Challenges – The Results

Teams and Teamwork
Reading Time: 7 minutesTeams and Teamwork have changed The make-up and nature of teams have changed significantly in recent years. Organisations have become more distributed across geography and across industries. Closer relationships between people inside an organisation and those previously considered outside (customers, suppliers, partners and other stakeholders) have become more important. Organisations [...]

Teams and Teamwork 2.0

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Reading Time: 3 minutesI’m not sure who came up with the phrase – ‘There’s no ‘I’ in team’, and I’m sure it was meant with good intentions – focussing everyone on team work and collective goals and not individual egos. I’ve always used the hugely clever and witty repost whenever anyone has said [...]

There’s no I in Team…but there is an ‘M’ and ...

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Reading Time: 4 minutesThis week I’ve had the privilege to meet with some fantastic educators from around the region. Some of these conversations were around the topic of employability – what differentiates great from good candidates and what do employers look for in school leavers or graduates? So below I’ve outlined 10 key attributes that I believe are crucial [...]

Employability ~ Who to employ?