Author: Shawn Cunningham
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Where to focus next?
A few of my clients are preparing to wind down their manufacturing and engineering activities for the Christmas break. This is especially true for my clients in the Southern Hemisphere, where at least half of December is the holiday season. Clients with a retail business model are most likely now planning for the busiest time…
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Strategy means saying “No!”
At the start of this year, I want to share some advice I received from Prof David Maister many years ago. David Maister was an early podcaster in the 2000s and I loved listening to his podcast. Maister argued that many leaders are trained to say “yes” and then they get stretched so thin that…
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How you can use Slack and MS Teams to foster knowledge management and information sharing
I am a member of several Slack and MS Teams workspaces, and I am often struck by how little organisations I work with invest in making these digital workspaces valuable instruments to nurture ideas, develop knowledge in a distributed way or share information in a way that saves people time. I prefer Slack over Teams,…
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How to kickstart innovation in my team?
This is the question that I receive most often from leaders. Where do I start with improving innovation in my organisation or department? Often this goes along with a sigh and a statement like “once upon a time we were very innovative, but then we settled down”. Often, the leaders that ask me about innovation…
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Leveraging the novel capabilities of newly acquired technologies
The measures applied to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic have certainly forced many organisations, teams and individuals to use digital technologies in new ways. However, I doubt whether the new ways of using technologies have transformed the way organisations work, or the way that work is organised. Let me explain. The term “technology” is a…
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Now is the time to think about what is next after what is next
Updated and improved on 18 April 2020, Originally published, March 19 2020 I have found the past month a bit surreal, to say the least. When I travelled through an international airport at the end of January I saw paramedics treating a person who had collapsed. The paramedics were not wearing masks and gloves, while a…
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How to use remote team collaboration
This is a grammar edited and improved version of an earlier post. I am supporting teams that are using Slack, MS Teams or other remote collaboration applications. Some of my clients also use Viber or WhatsApp. In our company, Mesopartner, we’ve been using Slack for a few years. It’s not my purpose here to review…
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Supporting your team from a distance during self or imposed isolation
This is a grammar edited and improved version of an earlier post. I have been receiving many messages from clients and friends asking for advice on how to work from home. I have organised the requests into three groups. The first group has been asking me how I manage my time. What works for me is…
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Don’t waste time holding out for “normal” to return
Like you, I am spending hours each day in video calls with clients, friends, family and people I am trying to encourage during the COVID19 lockdown. Have often do you hear people say “in two weeks this will be over?” or, “I think I am coping well under the circumstances?”. How often do you hear…
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Much of innovation is mundane
I love facilitating thinking and reflection session with teams. However, there is one kind of request that I often decline, and that is a request to facilitate an annual innovation strategy rethink. I get many such requests towards the end of the year as organisations start thinking of the coming year and their “agenda” for…