It's not the Bad Apple, it's the Rotten Barrel
by Tony Quinlan on Nov 23, 2010 4:52:00 PM
The University of Prius offered up another gem as I was driving to work this week - this time from ABC's great All in the Mind podcast. For copyright reasons, the 3rd July 2010 episode was a re-run of a 2007 piece with Philip Zimbardo, titled When Good People Turn Bad. Zimbardo was th …
Practicalities and applications - SenseMaker in application
by Tony Quinlan on Nov 12, 2010 2:06:13 PM
Two great sessions last week at the QEII Conference Centre with Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge. The shift from theory to practical application of new management techniques based on principles of complexity, cognitive neuroscience, anthropology and others has been remarkably swift in r …
Get the story straight - Storytelling in Communications 1
by Tony Quinlan on Oct 26, 2010 5:00:58 PM
The opening gambit of more than one past client project has been "help us get our story straight". Sometimes it's just that - the general story - sometimes it's something specific: "help us get our customer story straight", "our story on leadership". It's an interesting starting point …
Organisational amnesia - is it safe to let go yet?
by Tony Quinlan on Oct 14, 2010 11:59:35 AM
The UK is having a bonfire today, well ahead of the usual Guy Fawkes Night celebrations. The Bonfire of the Quangos will be abolishing somewhere in the region of 180 QUasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations today in a bid to cut costs and reduce the confusion around these organ …
No sweat - the myth that getting hold of stories is difficult
by Tony Quinlan on Oct 13, 2010 6:02:26 PM
There is a moment of great relief that comes in every client's experience - the moment when the stories start to come in. And then the delight that not only are they coming in, but they're coming in volume!
300 stories about leadership, and still collecting
by Tony Quinlan on Sep 9, 2010 5:02:57 PM
One of the main planks to our client approach is that, as part of each project, we work with willing people in the client organisation to give them the skills to continue the work long after we've left. There are two reasons for doing this that matter - an attitude of not creating a d …
Information is to behaviour change as spaghetti is to a brick
by Tony Quinlan on Aug 31, 2010 10:49:17 PM
The title of this post comes from Wilbert E. Fordyce, who worked with people in chronic pain. It fascinates me that professionals who work in life and death fields understand (and get frustrated by) the fact that when people need to change their behaviour to save their lives, it's not …
Making sense of thousands of stories, suggestions or complaints
by Tony Quinlan on Aug 27, 2010 12:00:56 PM
Stories are fabulous things, but there's one thing about them that makes them a real bugger to work with. They're big, wordy and take time to read. And if you've got loads of them (or indeed anything over a couple of dozen) it's well-nigh impossible to see patterns in them or analyse …
The European story collecting tour
by Tony Quinlan on Apr 21, 2010 5:29:46 PM
A great day yesterday spent with the full Narrate team, David, Ron, Ruth, Meg, Anne and myself.
Admitting to difficult choices
by Tony Quinlan on Dec 4, 2009 12:29:41 PM
A recent conversation came round to an interesting communications point. A really important one, although it looks a bit pedantic: