Warning Signs
The Holy Island, also known as Lindisfarne, is off the coast of Northumberland in England and it is a popular tourist destination attracting thousands of visitors…
The Complexity Conundrum
Charles Dickens in the 1830’s wrote that he lived in an age of “unrelenting change and unpredictability” so we wonder what he would make of our current situation…
Engaging Conversations
Organizations care about employee engagement because the facts would suggest that it directly impacts their bottom line. Don’t believe us? Well recent and consistent…
Success Through Service
Service Design is a discipline that is gathering pace and we think it has plenty to offer organizations as they struggle with the dynamic of great customer service…
The Sound of Second Place
Failure is a topic most of us would rather avoid. But ignoring the obvious, and sometimes subtle, warning signs of impending business concern is a surefire way to…
Courageous Leadership
We hear this term a lot these days but what does it actually mean? We believe that it is meant to be a call to commit and to act. It refers to the act of making…
Surviving Stress
Last week’s blog was about our comfort with putting out fires but what about handling the stresses that the fires create? Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want…
No Place for Pyromaniacs
Putting out fires is very rewarding. It’s gratifying and provides instant validation for our efforts. This is apparently why people seem to like fires in business…
The Choice is Yours
We often hear the term “analysis paralysis” where apparently nothing ever gets achieved because people become overly concerned with the discussion rather than…
Serving for the Match
Most people would agree that there is some value in providing good service. An abundance of literature exists that state great customer service makes a company more…
Divided We Fall
Celebrating diversity is key to a healthy organization and we don’t just mean in terms of ethnicity, gender etc. We mean celebrating the fact that others have…
Considering Culture
Cultures exist wherever there is a collection of people, however big or small that group is. The group could be as large as a nation or as small as a student study…
Don't be surprised.....
We often find clients that doggedly follow a strategic direction despite plenty of warning signs giving ample notice that the direction is not going to deliver success.…
Decisions, Decisions....
Few corporate strategists making important decisions consciously take into account the cognitive biases that exists i.e. the systematic tendencies to deviate from…
Do the Do
McKinsey research tells us that 70% of change efforts fall short of the desired results and it is far too easy to blame this on a lack of effective communication. Some…
Never Too Late
Let’s talk about New Year resolutions because we seem to be bombarded at this time of year from all sides – fitness goals, life changing goals, career goals…
The Future is Bright
In last week’s blog we bemoaned the lack of wisdom in the world but at Optimize we believe in the credo that we shouldn’t criticize anything unless we are prepared…
Stupid is as Stupid Does
Reading the news or even just looking around us unveils a high degree of a lack in critical thinking – we might even consider that there is a whole lot of stupid…
Busy Fools?
We are always told that the world is a much busier place these days and we certainly encounter people every day that tell us that they are “really, really busy”.…
You Can Do It….Probably
Motivational posters abound. They shout at us from office walls, from Facebook, from Instagram, at the gym….they seem to be everywhere. Some are funny, some stir…