ConceptsNest

   Close your eyes and imagine yourself standing in front of a towering wall with small, colourful pegs scattered along the structure. Around your waist is a snug harness, and you begin to scale the wall, one step at a time, climbing higher and higher. Every move you make is methodical, forcing you to think with your body as much as your brain. There are mental health benefits of rock climbing that exceed the physical ones, and we don’t necessarily have to be a master of the sport to reap them. Leadership can be learned anywhere. Reflecting back on rock-climbing sessions, we realized how much this experience can be a metaphor for leadership experiences. Rock climbing offers many opportunities for personal and professional development.   1. Collaboration and Differing Perspectives: . . . -> Climbing is solitary, yet highly collaborative in nature. To climb safely, you must have someone to belay and/or spot you, meaning you are always part of a team. Acti...

As our career progresses, we may find we do fewer technical tasks and spend more time guiding a team or planning strategy . While that's often a given today, in the 19th century most companies promoted the best technicians. But Henri Fayol recognized that the skills that made them good at their jobs did not necessarily make them good managers . Who Was Henri Fayol? Fayol's  14 Principles of Management  identified the skills that were needed to manage well. While inspiring much of today's management theory, they offer tips that we can still implement in our lives and organizations. Fayol also created a list of the five Primary   Functions of Management , which go hand in hand with the Principles. What Is Administrative Theory? Fayol called managerial skills "administrative functions." In his 1916 book, "Administration Industrielle et Générale," he shared his experiences of managing a workforce. Fayol’s book – and his 14 Principles of Management – ...

  We often wonder how successful companies continue to navigate and grow and know exactly what direction to go . The trick seems to be an almost irresponsibly aggressive approach to growing key objectives with a talented group of people.  OKR is an acronym for Objectives and Key Results —  a framework for visioning and setting goals within an organization that was popularized by Google. Today, OKR is used at a seemingly broad variety of companies, from larger established firms like Anheuser-Busch and Deloitte to younger tech companies like Eventbrite and Twitter. Therefore, what are OKRs and how do they work, and — most importantly — do they work. Many leaders ask how they can align their team to the vision and set goals within their team. What is OKR? OKR is a goal-setting methodology originally developed by Andy Grove, former CEO and Chairman of Intel. In his book,  High Output Management , he describes OKRs as being the answer to two questions: We can expand the d...

  ***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Decision Making, its styles, different Cognitive Biases) Link to Chapter -01 Common Patterns in Decision Making The upside of understanding various patterns in decision-making is that they lead us to think about how the mind preforms its many complex functions in countless situations and how our awareness of time, space, and the various narrative and cognitive frameworks can help decode the factors that shape our decisions. Here is a graphic presentation of what author Venkatesh Rao puts forward in his book. The graphic shows “Information Location” across the x-axis going from Internal to External and “Visibility of Mental Models” on the y-axis going from Low to High. The distinctions among the four classes of basic decision patterns (above) are not arbitrary. They are based on the distribution and visibility of situational information . Information originates either in the decision-maker’s head or in the environment , and we ei...

The Benefits of Work-Life Balance Flexible working is more than just a trend. It represents a huge change in the way that organizations manage their work and their people. Even before the coronavirus lockdown, many organizations were exploring new ways of operating that allow people to have a better work-life balance. Ways that increase their engagement with, and control over, their work. The lockdown has forced us to adapt to new working patterns quickly. And now, as the restrictions start to ease, we're thinking about adopting some of these new practices in the longer term. What Is Flexible Working? Flexible working is any work pattern that differs significantly from the traditional, office-based, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. standard. It can involve working from home, working flexible hours, job sharing, or a mixture of all of these. The different kinds of flexible working are: A) Working from Home Working from home is exactly what it says: work carried out by employees in their own...