This fascinating book walks us through the history of sport and clarifies how the links to business began when the value of endorsement was seen by Horst Dassler (Adidas) in the 1960’s.

With a fan base that exceeds any religion, sport has shaped the modern world more than we realise. Bose explores how business and sport have become mutually dependent over the years. According to the FT, ‘Mihir Bose’s hugely ambitious new book examines not only how sport has become big business but also how this change has altered the original concept of sporting spirit. Mr Bose’s research is wide and deep, and his prose bright and clear. He has wonderfully illuminated the rise and fall of the sporting spirit.’

Available at Amazon

This technique became popular in the 1970’s by Toyota. The  ‘5 whys’ approach involves looking at any problem or issue and simply asking ‘why?’ or ‘what are the reasons for the problem?’ until the root cause becomes apparent.

We found that the response to the first ‘why’ prompted another ‘why’ and so on. Applying this model felt very conversational and natural.

The benefit of the  ‘5 whys’ is that it helps you to get to the root cause of a problem quickly. It works more effectively when you start with the problem and then work backwards towards the root cause.

Bear in mind that if this model doesn’t quickly give you the answer that feels right then a more in-depth problem solving approach may be required such as a Cause and Effect Analysis.

• Nearly half of UK managers are expecting redundancies in 2012, and over a third of managers feel insecure in their jobs.
• Managers have grave concerns over their organisations’ people capabilities – 43% do not believe their organisation has the right people to fulfil business objectives in 2012.
• Optimism about the UK’s economic performance for 2012 remains low as organisations continue to face the effects of European economic instability, rising energy prices and domestic austerity.

In terms of their own performance, 40% of managers are looking to develop their strategic decision making skills in 2012, with around a third looking to develop their project management skills (32%) and coaching and mentoring (36%). As part of its commitment to improving the impact and performance of UK managers, CMI is encouraging businesses to support the development of management and leadership excellence across the UK.

We offer Chartered Management Institute (CMI) qualifications such as award, certificate or diploma, which span all levels of management, from Level 2 (team leader/supervisory level) up to Level 7 (senior management level).

Controversially, the author of Good to Great, Jim Collins believes that greatness comes from consistency rather than innovation. In his new book, ‘Great by Choice’, he challenges the causes of success and questions whether it derives from luck or talent; genius or hard work or creativity or plain diligence.

In the face of inevitable change, Collins believes success comes down to control and discipline. The book focuses on 10X companies which are companies that outperform their industry averages by at least 10 times. Interestingly, these companies displayed 3 fundamental behaviours:

1. Fanatic discipline and a solid focus on achieving their goals
2. Empirical creativity – an obsession with facts rather than opinion
3. Productive paranoia – constant working to fuelling preparation and precaution

The research around organisational behaviour really highlights how the back to basics approach still works, i.e. hitting well defined targets, demonstrating both resolve and control and proving resistant to a changing marketplace through behaving consistently.

An important lesson is that innovation is not always the best route to success. The brash risk-takers didn’t demonstrate sustainability. What determined an organisation’s success is how it prepared for both good and bad luck.

There are a lot of similarities between what Collins is saying and the Disney Strategy. Watch out for this on the next blog.

This tool helps to introduce a formal method of problem definition and evaluation as well as provide a structured process for creativity.

DO IT is an acronym that stands for:

D – Define problem
O – Open mind and apply creative techniques
I –  Identify best solution
T – Transform

These steps are:

1. Problem Definition: During this stage you apply a number of techniques to ensure that you are asking the right question.
2. Open Mind: Here you apply creativity techniques to generate as many answers as possible to the question you are asking. At this stage you are not evaluating the answers.
3. Identify the best solution: Only at this stage do you select the best solutions from the ones you came up with in step 2. Where you are having difficulty in selecting ideas, use formal techniques to help.
4. Transform: The final stage is to make an action plan for the implementation of the solution, and to carry it out. Without implementation, your creativity is sterile.

Contact us for more information regarding our business training courses

We spend most of our day communicating so a great way of boosting our productivity is to ensure that our communication is as clear and effective as possible.

The 7C’s provide a useful checklist for effective communication to ensure that your communication is structured, concise and clear.

According to the 7 Cs, communication needs to be:

• Clear
• Concise
• Concrete
• Correct
• Coherent
• Complete
• Courteous

We are currently running a number of communication skills training courses in Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire and across the West Midlands. Contact us for more information.

It doesn’t just end here, businesses need leaders and in today’s climate of change, they need to be consistently developing a pipeline of future leaders.

Organisations need to ensure that they pipeline is fluid and that there are no blockages as a result of not recognising and optimising existing talent pools.

Available at Amazon: The Leadership Pipeline- How to Build The Leadership Towered Company by Ram Charan, Steve Drodder & Jim Noel.

Change occurs in everyday life often without us being aware of it. It is unavoidable in some cases instigated by events which are out of our control acting as a precursor to the change. This is strangely easier to cope with as we have no control or say what is happening to us so we adapt and alter our behaviour accordingly.

The thought of change in business varies from person to person. Some find change hard and rarely make the decision themselves; others are willing to adjust to change but rarely are the first to instigate it. There are also others who positively embrace change and are always reassessing current practices with a view to improve. This may be from a personal point of view or taking into account the situation or environment.

Either way we need a good plan to follow with a strong enough reason to change to make it successful. We have a wide range of management and general business training courses focussing on change to improve company, managerial and employee performance.

Leading change; this course enables participants to promote innovation within their team and lead and facilitate change successfully. The participants learn about the psychology behind how people deal with change and how to overcome resistance. The course includes a proven approach to successfully leading change.

The Innovative Leader; this course enables participants to explore and develop their ‘entrepreneurial’ capability and provides the skills that enable them to lead lasting, successful change initiatives. Participants will also learn how to apply creativity tools to help progress projects, improve problem solving, continuous improvement and general forward thinking back in the workplace.

Positive Influencing Skills training; this course helps participants to develop a practical understanding of positive influencing behaviours and the skills/ techniques to enable them to influence others more effectively. They also gain awareness of how their behaviour impacts on relationships and results.

Contact Adalta today for more information regarding how we can help you cope with change in a positive rewarding way.

Here at Adalta we see the New Year as an ideal time to re assess working practices and improve the efficiency of your organisation and the people within it.

It’s the time to address bad habits, poor practices and ineffective leadership. This provides an opportunity to develop employee training and development and put in place everything that is required to achieve the desired results for the year ahead.

We invest the time and energy up front, free of charge, to tailor the relevant business training courses and put in place everything that is required to achieve desired results. We make it our business to help your business attain peak performance.

• Diagnose the issues/opportunities that need to be tackled and agree what the training aims to achieve.
• Develop a programme that addresses the issues and/or opportunities identified.
• Deliver training in a way that engages people and accelerates learning.
• Evaluate that the training has achieved what was intended.

We know how important it is to ensure that people connect with our training and are able to immediately put this into practice in their day-to-day work. We take a real-world, practical approach to learning helping organisations get the best from the people.

Contact us today and let’s discuss your vision for the year ahead.

It is now common for OD practitioners to require training that is delivered within a shorter lead time; with the demand for evidence of how this is tailored to the organisation and a format that minimises the time in the classroom.

Such changing expectations are seeing an end to ‘off the shelf’ training courses and unnecessary complex processes that traditionally under-pin bespoke training.
The savvy customers of today are very informed about what they want, how they want it and what they want to pay for it which we think is great.

Some of our lovely clients, who ask for a bespoke course in 48 hours turn our hair grey slightly, but we wouldn’t do without them!