Exhausted. The most common response I get to an opening question I pose senior leaders that I have the chance to speak with most days of the week. Change and uncertainty: The two most common responses to my follow-up question about the root causes of that exhaustion. I appreciate their openness about their feelings....
We’ve found a missing link in the change chain
Organisations are constantly in motion. Expanding and shrinking. Accelerating and slowing down. Pursuing and following. A business represents a fluid system that exerts and reacts to forces both internal and external, known and unknown. The better equipped organisations are to cope with their dynamic nature the quicker and faster they can move forward. This...
Important questions that will serve your ‘return to work’ considerations well
As many businesses continue to wrestle with the “if“ and/or “how” of whether employees should head back to working on-site, there seems to be an opportunity here for those same organisations to consider their role on a societal scale. Since early Summer 2020, we have been challenging individual leaders and their organisations, to consider...
Is it really fair to expect busy leaders to support the wellbeing of their team?
It makes sense that leaders and managers impact the productivity and engagement of those in their teams. Both negatively and positively. In fact, isn’t positively affecting these two measures, at least partly, what leaders are rewarded for? But wellbeing? You can hear leaders and managers everywhere, as one voice claim, “That’s not in my...
Three approaches to developing organisation-wide sustainable productivity
Whilst total production fell in the UK through 2020 due to the effects of the pandemic, average productivity increased marginally on hourly output measures, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Perhaps neither of these figures are wholly surprising, given the vastly different types of jobs done by people all across the UK....
Are you destined to become a great leader?
It seems to us that as we look around politics and business life, there is a real dearth of great leadership. But what do we mean when we say “great leadership”? In Exigence’s view, a ‘great’ leader should not be confused with either a famous (or infamous) leader. Leaders can achieve notoriety for all...
It’s not advice leaders need. It’s time.
Heeding advice, even great advice and then adjusting behaviours, can be really challenging at the best of times. And these are not those times. Don’t eat refined sugars. Take exercise for a minimum of 20 minutes, three times a week. Eat more green vegetables. We’ve all heard this advice repeatedly over the years. Even...