Ideas and Insights
The perils and pearls of searching
To find an ideal candidates for a senior role in an organization or for a Board position, companies often turn to search firms. In this paper Tim Dalmau and his colleague, John Peebles, gather their collective experience to identify the required conditions where using a search firm will improve significantly the chances of finding a pearl – a successful candidate who delivers the results and fits the style of the organization.
A skeptics recommendation for a good read on leadership
Recently at a reunion of university friends I talked with someone I hadn’t seen in 25 years.
He has recently retired from a long career in large organizations.
Whilst joking about the ‘closeness to the bone’ of the recent series of Utopia on ABC, he went on to bemoan the mostly useless series of management and leadership development programs he had been subject to in his career.
He is a talented person of a scientific / technical and creative bent, and interested in people, and always had an acute sense of when someone was talking nonsense. In fact he was renowned for the invention of a (virtual) “bullsh** filter”, very necessary in those heady days of robust debate and intellectual one-up-manship that characterized those fondly remembered undergraduate times.
He did say however, that there was one book that had made much sense to him, and had passed the bullsh** filter test, – Leading for the Disillusioned: Moving beyond myths and heroes to leading that liberates (2007). I was curious to see what would make sense to my friend, a person so skeptical of ‘management and leadership theory. Read more…
Change in different cultures
In a short paper Phil Chamberlain, of Dalmau Consulting provides an overview of his experience in, and lessons learned, from his involvement in the emerging large-scale dairy industry in China. He does not claim to be a change management expert, rather a veterinarian who has found himself in a position to advise and to some extent facilitate organizations make changes that on the surface appear straightforward, but in reality mean challenging cultural norms and approaches that are not immediately obvious to an outsider.
Click here to read or download the paper Change in Different Cultures
Getting real value from consultants
This month in a short paper, Tim Dalmau and Viv Oates examine the client- consultant relationship and what works well, common pitfalls and some useful guidelines to getting the most from the relationship . Click here to download, Getting Real Value from Consultants.
Safety: Lessons from the field
A client asked me recently to reflect on what I had learned from helping other clients create incident free and care filled workplaces. This paper spells out those learnings. Click here to read or download.
Change and Transition
This is one of the most common areas that many people that we work with approach us for help. It is almost trite to say that change is constant in our organisations and communities, but this does not mean that adapting to change, managing and leading change is any easier.
However, there have been some great thinkers that have helped us understand change better and in doing so, there are some lesson for us in how to help organizations and people adapt and thrive in a dynamic environment.
Steve Zuieback, a facilitator of extraordinary talents and hugely valued member of Dalmau Consulting, has guided many organizations through transition and change. Steve is based in California, and has worked extensively with Dalmau Consulting in Australia and South Africa as well as in the US.
He has put together a great video and material giving an overview of William Bridges work on Transition and Change.
Click here to learn a useful model and explore some real life examples related to handling change and transition in organisations.
