Author: admin@michaelgriffin.uk

Most organisations say they want to become learning organisations. They invest in training. Leadership development. Knowledge systems. Reviews. Data. Lessons-learned exercises. All of these can help. But I’ve been wondering whether learning begins somewhere rather more fundamental. With a choice. Something happens. A decision produces an unexpected result. Someone receives…

I’ve made plenty of mistakes during my working life. Some were relatively unimportant. Others looked perfectly reasonable when I made them and rather less so with hindsight. And occasionally I’ve learned far more from getting something wrong than I ever learned from getting it right. But there is a condition…

We often talk about trust as though it were something an organisation either has or doesn’t have. We measure it. We put it into values statements. We ask leaders to build it. We describe high-trust and low-trust cultures. But perhaps trust is not really an organisational characteristic at all. Perhaps…

Imagine a leadership team announcing: “From today, we are going to trust each other.” It sounds slightly absurd. Yet organisations attempt something remarkably similar all the time. Trust appears in values. It appears in leadership programmes. It appears in employee surveys and culture initiatives. People are encouraged to speak openly,…

Most organisations want more innovation. So they create innovation programmes. Idea schemes. Workshops. Hackathons. Innovation teams. New processes designed to generate new thinking. All of those things can help. But I’ve been wondering whether innovation actually begins much earlier. Before the workshop. Before the process. Before someone puts an idea…

I’ve been thinking this week about something we often say: “We need more ideas.” I’m becoming less convinced that organisations necessarily do. People have ideas all the time. They notice inefficient processes. They see customer problems. They recognise opportunities. They know when something isn’t working. They occasionally see possibilities long…

Organisations frequently say they want innovation. They encourage people to challenge assumptions, bring forward ideas and think differently. Yet some of the most valuable ideas in an organisation may never be heard. Not because someone rejected them. Not because they were discussed and found wanting. But because they were filtered out…

I wonder how many good ideas never make it into the room. Not because they weren’t good enough. But because somebody decided not to say them. We tend to notice innovation once it becomes visible. The new product. The improved process. The breakthrough idea. The successful change. What we rarely…