THE HUMAN STACKS

Establishing and maintaining stakeholder alignment is fundamental to the success of any initiative, project or programme. Although stakeholders may appear committed to a programme, it is often easier for them to  be diplomatic and give token buy-in, rather than actually committing to supporting a programme and actively contributing to it.

The ability to articulate a vision is vital in the process of transforming concepts and plans into tangible and valuable reality. Although a vision may seem to make perfect sense for its originator, it will usually become vaguer and more ambiguous as it is disseminated through an organisation.

The capacity to attract support to innovative product developments and transformative ways of working is one of the biggest challenges in the workplace. Although an organisation’s mission and vision may appear to support innovation and transformation, these types of initiatives often go nowhere due to a lack of support.

The most effective teams are those that coalesce around a common purpose by fulfilling an identified need and creating value from it. Although the members of an effective team may not agree with each other or be completely aligned, they will trust each other and be united around their chosen purpose.

Effective communication is fundamental to the success of any course of actions in an organisation, both individual and collective levels. Usually, quantity of communication tends to be favoured over quality and this often leads to an information overload where most of the communication may appear irrelevant or meaningless.

The ability to create a conversation is the most powerful communication skill that any person can possess in an organisation. Most conversations in organisations, however, tend to be one-way transmissions, where one person isn’t really listening to what is being said and is simply waiting for their turn to speak.

In any organisation, there are often seemingly invisible barriers and bottlenecks that slowdown or completely prevent the fulfilment of need and creation of value.  Although many of these boundaries have been put in place with good intentions, they very often have unintended consequences.

In any human venture, no matter how apparently small or grand, there will be setbacks and unexpected challenges to continued progress.  In an ideal world, there would be no need to develop resilience, as everything would simply run smoothly with no conflicts or dilemmas.

The greatest opportunities for an organisation to create value are often to be found in the areas of seemingly greatest uncertainty.  Although leadership is usually considered to be a formal role that is bestowed by a higher authority, the most effective leader is anyone who has the ability to step into uncertainty and invite others into opportunity.

Mindset is the way in which a person generates their perceptions of their working environment and forms the perspectives around it. From a conventional perspective, mindset is usually considered to be located in the mind of an individual and changing that mindset requires changing the individual’s behaviour in some way.

Culture is the often unseen space that an organisation operates in and by actively developing that space, an organisation can dramatically increase its effectiveness. Culture is often seen as a thing, some sort of object that can be upgraded or simply removed and the new culture plugged in.

Finding meaning is the one thing that all human beings look for in their work, beyond all the material motivations and intentional incentives. The challenge is, however, that very little priority is usually given to providing meaningful work or even acknowledging the significance of meaning in the workplace.

The most valuable skills are the human skills, the ability to engage with other human beings and to understand who they are, what they need and what they believe. Although these fundamental human skills are the most valuable in an organisation, they are often ignored because they are considered to be soft skills, which are considered to be intangible and therefore of no real value

Creating successful outcomes in an organisation, both at an individual and collective level, often requires the gaining of permission from people in power and authority. Although formal leaders are often seen as having the ultimate power in making decisions, they are also human beings who need support and assistance as they are trying to navigate their way through complex and uncertain situations.

Most organisations have idealised organisational structures with detailed planning procedures as a way of achieving known and certain outcomes within tightly defined time-frames. The reality of most organisational processes, however, is that they involve complex situations that cannot be controlled or predicted, they can only be navigated by the people in the organisation developing and using self-awareness and situational awareness.

Although culture is said to eat strategy for breakfast, purpose invites both of them out to dinner and shows them how to actually fulfil fundamental needs and create value. In many organisations, however,  little or no priority is given to defining purpose and understanding how it can be used to fulfill  individual and collective needs, and create consistent value from them.

The capacity to source inspiration is a fundamental requirement for any innovative organisation seeking to create value by transforming aspects of the business. Although inspiration is often considered as an experience that happens to people by chance, the reality is that powerful inspiration can be generated at any time by creating the circumstances for it to emerge

Many corporate cultures are unconsciously and unintentionally fear-based. Fear experiences can include the fear of failure, the fear of criticism, the fear of letting go or being let go of. The conventional response to these fearful experiences as to usually try and ignore the fear but the most effective solution is to transform it into an experience of self-affirmation.