Jean Boulton

Within our boxes, we talk incessantly about thinking outside the box, rather than doing so. Read my latest article in the Journal of Management Inquiry - @JMgmt_Inquiryhttps://lnkd.in/eAjhZHKA

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My 2nd Storyboarding post from the #ScalingTheEdge Programme funded by UK Research and Innovation and Innovate UK! The purpose of which is to #reflect on (learn from) the process of being involved in a well-resourced #Government scheme like this. Which is unusual because it isn’t just about pitching (which comes at the end of in this process) or sharing our ideas (which are commercially sensitive). It’s about testing and exploring the market need for our product or service first! Hence, my first noticing is that unlike so many other #SmallBusinessDevelopment things I’ve been to previously, this one DOES not involve peers! In fact it actually involves your team working online over 2 days with a series of expert coaches (who you do the deep thinking work with)! (lesson 1: Be strategic about where you invest your valuable time) In addition this week, I attended some excellent #LinkedInTraining with their approved Marketing firm @BrilliantRedDigital on how to search for specific contacts that might be able to help me explore the need for our latest idea and I realised a few things (lesson 2: challenging my assumptions as I thought I already knew how to do this! - I didn’t!) On #practicing afterwards (because that's the only way we learn) I noticed that the people/companies that I'm looking for aren't actually there in my existing contacts (lesson 3: I'm beginning to notice the difference between my longstanding professional contacts and new business contacts - which requires research and oodles of time!) This means that I need to take the time to #evaluate what I know/ need to know (by reviewing and revising my networks), organise how I spend my time differently (by investing in new processes/technologies) to help me manage the work that’s involved in exploring how these new markets work and what people in them might need (lesson 4: be open to learning again and working hard!). #MarketExploration #LinkedIn

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Extensive research and long-term observations have demonstrated that the absence of constructive challenge and debate surrounding ideas and opportunities often results in serious negative consequences. These consequences may include economic setbacks, damage to reputation, regulatory issues, legal complications, and, in many cases, the downfall of the enterprise. Recognizing the significance of fostering an environment where individuals feel encouraged to voice their opinions and constructively challenge ideas is critical for leaders across both business and public sectors. By promoting such an atmosphere, diverse perspectives can be considered before making and implementing decisions. This report is based on thorough and objective research, offering actionable insights. I strongly recommend adopting the report's recommendations.

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🤔 How can we ensure that communications about organisational transformations are of a high quality and effective? 🔊 The week has got off to a great start here at Durham University Business School with the second our business insights sessions for the #UG Managing Organisational Change module. We were delighted to welcome Jane Austin, HRD @Wave Utilities who gave a very engaging session on leading change in a startup company. One of the key points we focused on was the importance of communication and Jane shared some of her approaches for communicating about change (see presentation below). The quality of communications can have a significant impact on the outcomes of a business transformation. Empirical research has consistently demonstrated that effectively managed communication during transformational change is related to a range of positive employee outcomes. For example, studies (such as Parker, Jimmieson and Johnson, 2013) show a direct link between high-quality communication about change and reduced anxiety and uncertainty as well as enhanced self-efficacy to cope with impending changes. 📣 One way to ensure high quality communications is to deliver the message with the appropriate tone and style using: ➡️  Compassion: Show the audience that you care about their perspectives. Inform employees as soon as possible about the transformation: Why, When and How the process will evolve and within what expected time span. Emphasise ‘what is in it for the organization and for individuals and teams and ensure clarity on the ‘why’ – the rationale for the change. Remember to repeat and update this message regularly. ➡️ Clarity: Communicate clearly and repeat key messages. ➡️   Conciseness: Ensure that the message is short enough to internalize because long, complicated sentences can be hard to understand and demand more concentration. Keep communications short, clear and concise. ➡️ Connection: Connect emotionally with the audience and provide opportunities for employees to give feedback by: ensuring appropriate channels for employee voice  and that different groups feel able to access them; actively seeking people’s ideas; and taking action on feedback. ➡️  Candor. Admit what you don’t know, for instance, if an employee asks you whether there will be redundancies, and you are not sure whether they will happen or not. Your response might be: “I wish I could tell you exactly what is going to happen. We will give you updates as soon as we know them.” (source: Hodges, 2024). What else have you learnt that is important for ensuring high quality communications? Would love to hear your views. Lisa Davis Neil Graney Ushma Bhatt Ann-Marie Blake Emma Earl Jessica Crow Kimberly Shaw Nick Kemp Hayden Swerling Nicole Gahagan, Ed.D. Camilla Hemström Nisha Joshi - Leadership Coach and Delivery Consultant Jennifer Hoe Lisa Cardow Algy Ayson, MBA, PGDip, CMgr FCMI, MAPM #communications #businesstransformations #peoplecentricchange

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New Lancaster University Management School and Sunway Business School #Podcast on Building a Sustainable Future 🌏 Link: https://lnkd.in/drm2kz_m In this episode co-hosted by the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business Director Jan Bebbington and Content Manager Paul Turner, Lancaster University Management School Associate Dean (International) Marwan Izzeldin and Sunway Business School Deputy Dean (Research and Sustainability) Yuka Fujimoto and yours truly discussed on the state of sustainability and what lies ahead for the planet and its people🎙 The world has many problems, which are growing, not shrinking, as seen by the increase from 8 Millennium Development Goals for 2015 to 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2023, and very likely another 50 for 2050, as we are regressing, not progressing, on sustainability 📉 What the world needs is a reimagination in the ways we approach sustainability - new ways, whether we like it or not, that would move the elephant in the room: the 80% of people, be it consumers or companies, that remain reluctant and resistant, albeit with some logical reasons like cost and quality 🐘 We need - more than ever - to make doing good less cumbersome and less expensive, and to do so requires us to address the basics like creating economies of scale and delivering superior value 🌟 The power of education cannot be understated as it is with education that people become more aware, critical, and innovative, which are the key attributes needed to deliver the solutions we require to improve the state of the world 🛠 We also need to recognize that though challenges like climate change and poverty resonate globally, the context of these challenges may be very different locally (poverty is greater in rural areas in the global south, which is the opposite in the global north), indicating that what we need are local solutions (rural versus urban) to address global challenges (like poverty)💡 Sunway University Sunway Business School #aclassabove #campuswithaconscience #discoveryourdestiny #livelearnlead #mosthappeningcampus #mosthappeingschool #mosthappeninglecturers #mosthappeningprofessors #mySunwayfamily

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Share your views on innovation management practice. There is still time for you to contribute to this important survey… and it’s not only for innovation managers!

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Are you a UK Research and Innovation #FutureLeadersFellow or a research fellow with any other research council in the UK/Europe? Are you interested in #climateaction? Have you felt that this is a #wickedproblem that requires a multidimensional, systems-thinking, inclusive and reflexive #sensemaking approach? Do you take epistemological bias (bias related to one's positionality/frame of appraising the world) seriously and seek to achieve a more inclusive and diversified analysis of climate issues? Then this event is for you! My brilliant colleague Dr Maru Mormina and I recently received some seed funding from the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network to test a new approach to collective deliberation around wicked problems. We teamed up with another FLF, the brilliant Graeme MacGilchrist, to pilot our approach with the Climate Connections Community of Practice that he currently coordinates. If you have missed it, there are still seats to register! The workshop will take place Nov 29 at the lovely BMA House in London. Come along for a reflective, participant-led session that will challenge you to ‘think together’ and ‘think differently’ about the interrelationships, tensions, overlaps and synergies between mitigation and adaptation strategies within the broader landscape of sustainable development. Employing systems thinking and Socratic dialectics we aim to unleash the power of collective intelligence by fostering reflection, collaboration and innovation, recognising that the big picture emerges, and system change happens, when we start seeing the world through the eyes of another (kudos to Dr Maru Mormina for this sentence!). Register now: https://lnkd.in/eyke5VnQ Note: **If you are not part of the FLF Development Network, email me at [email protected] to share the event details and register you for the event. #FLF #DevelopmentNetwork #fellowled #creativeflexiblegrant #pilot #participantled #climateaction #connections #critical #dialogical #epistemologicalreflexivity #multidisciplinary #systemsthinking #wickedproblems

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What other skills do you think consultants will need in 2025?🤔 #managementconsulting #organisationalchange #capabilities

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Some practical guidance for businesses wanting to set up a Future Leaders Network from Institute of Business Ethics and its Future Leaders Ethics Network https://lnkd.in/ex_fi4bu

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We're going on tour! if you'd like to join our SME masterclass this year, see below 👇

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I don’t usually write personal thoughts on LinkedIn – perhaps it reflects my vulnerability – However, today, after the Enabling SME event (https://lnkd.in/eX_RxbpM), a mixture of relief, disheartenment and reflection on what to learn and what’s next, I feel I need to spell out some personal feelings and thoughts to be able to sleep! Some might say today’s event wasn't a successful one – there could have been more people, more discussion and more suggestions. Yes, perhaps. Nonetheless, was it meaningful? I would say yes! I have been exploring the concept of ‘meaningfulness’ for my research on meaningful work – this notion can be associated with two occasions, namely, feeling authenticity and the value of action being shared widely (e.g., my action creates meaning not only to me but also to others). Having been feeling ‘authentic’ in this process? Yes! Throughout the process of developing scenario and organising this event aiming at contributing to co-creation of the scenario, I felt authentic interests, enthusiasm and efforts in learning and exploring 1) myself – the bias, pre-conception and assumptions that I have had but was not aware of; 2) the technology – the basic of it, what might be possible or not, what can be done or not, and thus, what might be desirable or not; and 3) experiences of disabled people – the challenges they are facing in their daily life, the future they are hoping and the reality that makes them being sceptical about the hope.  Was the value shared with others? Absolutely! Through this process, I’ve met people who just do kind things simply because they believe the value of what I am doing. Thank you Ingo Frommholz for having been my personal scientific advisor 😉. Julian Gwinnett Wolverhampton School of Creative Industries – you were basically another member of the team, appreciating this event even more than I did! Katy Deacon you value the hope side from our imagination of the possible by sharing this with your contacts even though we haven’t met in person yet - such trust and support of yours in our scenario have been an enormous encouragement for me to keep going...  So what's next? Our scenario building to contribute to InterAct scenario is still ongoing (the scenario and following questions can be found in the link below) and we Marisa Smith Nigel Caldwell Sebastian Pattinson John Oyekan, PhD, CEng, MIET, FHEA, FRSA will consider this experience as the first stepping stone for many more conversations and collaborations to come. Well, I might regret writing a very long honest personal post when I wake up tomorrow – but perhaps, sometimes being vulnerable is just ok… https://lnkd.in/gAJa2-_D

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A must-read for anyone pondering Learner Profiles and Skills Passports from Kirsty Kitto. There's nothing new about the idea of centralising evidence of learning in the one place, but we've yet to reach this Utopia. Kirsty lays out her argument for a government-led, open-source system based on agreed core skill taxonomies, which would require collaboration across and between systems. I'm left wondering if there is still a lot of groundwork to be done before any kind of technology/SaaS solution could realistically be implemented. We need to start by defining and mapping core skills across contexts, and storing these in an open-source framework accessible to all, and the individual players then need to agree to use this framework. Theoretically, this could be helpful for jurisdictions and organisations who want to move towards skills-based hiring as well. #SkillsPassport #LearnerProfile

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Aimee Quickfall, Matt Varley and I have started writing our new book this week. A central jumping off point is Ron Glatter's paper from 2006 where he argues that leadership interests need to be embedded in a consideration of organisation rather than being too self-referential. Our book will very much grow out of this really crucial observation. Hence it's working title: 'Leadership, organisation and the sustainability of teacher work '.

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Analysis for Innovators Round 14: Stage 1 Closes: 9 October 2024 UK registered businesses can apply for funding to resolve productivity and competitiveness issues by working with top scientists and research facilities. Your proposal must describe a measurement or analysis problem where you are seeking a solution to improve your business’s productivity or competitiveness. You must provide an estimate of the value to your business of solving it.

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Had a fantastic time at our latest Orange Belt session, where the group discussed influencing styles, standardised work & change management tools. We also had some great conversations around Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA). Here you can see our now-famous T shirt folding LTD at work, examining how we create & reinforce standardisation! #leansixsigma #improvements #changemanagement #changestory #standardwork

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5 trends shaping strategy for the research sector for 2025. Trend #1: Aligning Research Efforts with National Economic and Employment Agendas Strategic response: Rebalance research priorities, enhance industry collaboration, and develop relevant skills and training programs to upskill the future workforce. Trend #2: De-Globalising Political Influences. Strategic response: Diversify collaborations, leverage regional strengths, and enhance bilateral ties. Trend #3: The Transformative Role of AI in Research Strategic response: Invest in AI infrastructure, foster AI expertise, and ensure ethical use. Trend #4: Differentiating and Enhancing Civic Roles Strategic response: Develop a community engaged strategy, foster cross-sectoral collaboration, change performance metrics, and enhance institutional capacity. Trend #5: Rethinking Research Funding Strategic response: Develop large strategic investments, foster internal collaboration, ensure flexible resource allocation models, and develop deep trusted partnerships with external partners.

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Enjoyed collaborating with Joanna Wilson and Working Families on this study focused on the opportunities and challenges for #SMEs in the 'life friendly' space. As Jane van Zyl says in the introduction "we know that people are our greatest asset and are worth investing in". But how should we do this? We offer recommendations around: ✅ integrating flexibility ✅ taking a more individualised approach ✅ the need for tailored guidance

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I begin the week with this Pledge! Please feel free to download and adapt for your company. One idea is to paste this on the Signature Wall and get your employees to sign. For more ideas on Embedding BCM and Developing BCM Culture in your organisation - please get in touch. DBD Training & Consultancy (OPC) Private Limited #bcm #businesscontinuity #businesscontinuitymanagement #businesscontinuityplanning #resilience

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