20 April 2010

If Only I’d Known Then, What I Know Now: Things you need to know to change your organisation for the better

Jeremy Cox, Vanguard Consulting

Ever wish you had known something sooner?  Most of us do.  Life frequently teaches us important lessons the hard way.

But here’s the rub, if someone had tried to tell you what you needed to know then, would you have listened to what they had to say?  It’s never easy to hear that what you believe and the way you’re behaving might be taking you further away from where you want to be.  As J.K. Galbraith said, “When faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving one doesn’t need to, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

That’s what this first meeting of NET2 in the North East was all about.  It was an opportunity, a free one at that, to learn from somebody else’s hard earned lessons.

We were delighted to be joined by Jeremy Cox, public sector lead at Vanguard Consulting. He once again, for the benefit of our North Eastern audience, shared with us his insights into common approaches to managing organisations and how to move to a better way, what he calls a ‘systems thinking’ approach, that has consistently delivered significantly higher ratings from end-users, less wasteful use of resources, and better, happier workplaces for employees.  Jeremy’s talk addressed:

• Problem solving
• Change management
• Customer focus
• Service design
• Value versus cost reduction
• Performance measurement
• Management versus leadership

Resources

You can download a copy of Jeremy’s slides from the meeting.

What participants said…

“This was an outstanding presentation, with plenty of insight, given to a sympathetic audience.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed the meeting.”

“The speaker was excellent.”

“The seating, as you had already noted, would have been much better in the form of circular tables to allow more interaction with other delegates- but you must be doing something right if need bigger room!”