Recently I was honoured to be asked to take the role of independent chair and skilled facilitator for an exciting new initiative from the Ministry of Justice.
In response to the issue of religious marriages not being legally recognised, the Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, supported face-to-face meetings to discuss these issues directly with Imams, given their influence in the community and role in officiating over religious marriages.
Having a religious marriage that is not recognised under civil law, often means people can encounter difficulties with division of assets should the marriage break down, and with inheritance and pension issues
Since last year the biggest challenge for the UK public sector has been to find ways of doing “more for less”. Now, however, we are starting to hear a lot more about “waste” – especially after the recent TV Chancellors’ Debate. Is this just a change of words, or is the distinction important?
Our big challenge is to reduce the public sector deficit as quickly as possible without putting the fragile recovery at risk.
In this context, perhaps a focus on waste is useful. It certainly makes people think about how much taxpayers’ money is spent on activity of little or no
If the term ‘culture change’ has you reaching for the metaphorical remote control to change the channel, you may have heard one too many pious exhortation to change the culture. I’ve heard two apparently contradictory views on culture recently that reminded me of what is at the root of organisational culture.
John Seddon of Vanguard Consulting can be relied upon for trenchant and provocative views and he recently took the head of HM Customs and Revenue to task for talking about and investing in culture change. The point he makes is that if you can get the flow and organisation of
Cuts in the public sector are what everyone has been expecting. How much and how fast is yet to be seen but it is going to be tough.
The challenge brings an opportunity because chopping piecemeal here and there won’t deliver the savings; so public service organisations will have to re-think what is delivered, how it is delivered and the system of institutions that do the delivering.
It’s time to demolish silos, cross boundaries, get over precious professionalism, ignore the usual excuses and do what is right.
Read the Budget at a glance http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8584608.stm
The old adage goes: leadership development is a tough, laborious and lengthy process, and usually happens one person at a time. When tackling it, the industry norm is to plump straight for 1:1 coaching or small group leadership courses, which are more often than not costly ventures. But are they really impactful enough, how about challenging the norm and trying something different?
What do you do if you only have one hour to work with a leadership issue, and an audience of 1,000 people? You book a big theatre in the West End, work with actors to bring the leadership issue
Two Stanton Marris clients have recently been nominated for awards for our work with them.
London Borough of Lewisham and Birmingham City Council have beaten tough competition to be nominated for the Employee Engagement award by Local Government Chronicle. The nominations highlighted ‘cutting edge corporate work’ which displayed councils’ ambition and imagination.
Lewisham LBC has been nominated for the ‘Lewisham Way’, an innovative service transformation programme developed with HR by Stanton Marris to engage teams across the council in service improvement.
Birmingham City Council’s BEST programme, which has already won four major awards for the combined BCC BEST team and Stanton Marris,
Recently on TV a small feature caught my attention. It reported a rather surprising innovation being trialled in a secondary school in Kent which is using lessons on building ‘mindfulness’ to help the pupils be more aware of themselves and what is going on around them. The pupils themselves are already saying that it is helping them to focus more both in class and in their school work and achieve better results. The classes are simply exercises in ‘mindful meditation’
Mindfulness meditation is a Buddhist idea also known as ‘insight’ because the intention is to gain insight into the true nature
About 25% of the population are introverts. This is a minority, but a significant one, especially since there seems to be a greater concentration of introverts amongst intellectually gifted people.
Myers Briggs defines introversion in terms of the source of energy which a person draws on in order to function in the world. Introverts get their energy from within. Extroverts need external stimulation (a bit like lizards in the sun). Jung says that we all prefer to behave as introverts or extroverts – one or the other. We are born with this preference, and it remains with us throughout our lives.
