I have been amogst the silent browsers for around a year now so it seems
past time to ask a question or two. I am an independent consultant with a
business portfolio broadly in thirds: making board reporting systems a
little more intelligible and useful (reflects my finance background);
'soft skills' training, particularly communication and 'change skills';
and project based ODish consulting. My work experience includes finance &
accounting; mergers, acquisitions and their undoing; strategy development
and running major change programmes (or trying to). For the last six years
or so I have been, like many others here, trying to understand what makes
things happen (or not) and have explored pieces of the personal
development, psychology and systems thinking. Now I know a lot more and
understand a little.
Right now I have three practical questions.
1) In setting up a piece of practical communication skills training
targeted at technical management I have been asked to recommend a short
360 degree survey that can be carried out as a pre-cursor to the training.
What questions could we usefully ask? (and does anyone know of any
existing material that would avoid re-inventing another wheel?)
2) A colleague has to make a short (30 minute) presentation to the
management of two businesses, one Dutch the other English, that have
recently been merged on the cross-perceptions of culture. He has the
content but is looking to leaven the mixture with some appropriate stories
of cultural differences. Any suggestions will be gratefully recieved?
3) The same colleague, at the same event, also needs to speak (for no more
that 10 minutes) about the change programme running in the English
business which has top down vision and direction and bottom up action (and
is working fairly well). He would like to know what the authoritative
theoretical underpinning is for this form of approach?
Thanks
Bob
--Bob Janes Webster & Janes Ltd Bob.Janes@Webster-and-Janes.co.uk
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>