I have been recently helping a large mining company in Kazakhstan with its strategy for its corporate university. Even prior to the Covid pandemic the wish was to move heavily into digital. Which was also the only way they could meet their vision of 100% of their...
Having been involved with change management and many change projects throughout my career, and having worked with many other change consultants and teachers, VUCA has been that comfortable friend with which you often begin when talking about why change management (and...
I‘ve been recently helping a couple of fellow consultants who are designing and running a leadership development course for the European organisation of a Japanese multinational. They asked me to do an hour session with each group on managing in the matrix. The...
Just before the Covid-19 pandemic started to hit Europe, we began Crisis Management consultancy for a large petrochemical company. Working together with the former global Head of Crisis Management for Royal Dutch Shell for over five years, we were asked to share...
During a set of change management workshops that I designed for people in different national Kazakh companies who were involved in ‘Transformation’ a couple of years ago, I used to ask who had heard of the Transition or Change Curve. And in any group of twenty-plus...
There is one organizational development process that I have used occasionally and really wish I had been able to apply more often in my career: Open Space Technology. And why have I not been able to use it more? Well, Open Space is not for the faint hearted. Most...
I shouldn’t still be surprised, I know, but the number of line managers I continue to meet in different companies and different countries, who still only think about formal training courses for the development of their staff, (or even the individuals themselves who...
Having worked with CCL (Center for Creative Leadership) in both Russia and Kazakhstan, who were the originators of the 70-20-10 meme for corporate learning & development many years ago (sometimes written 70/20/10 or even 70:20:10), and also being a researcher by...
One of my favourite icebreakers that I have used for people to get to know each other better, especially in new organisations, is People Bingo. There are different versions of the game, but the one that I think works best is when the people involved are...
I have written previously about the Ladder of Inference, one of my favourite tools for promoting productive conversations. https://valshebnik.com/blog/the-ladder-of-inference/ This helps us understand why we jump to conclusions, rightly or wrongly, and gives us a...
I’ve been recently conducting some focus groups for my Russian clients. Finding out what I already know: that Russians in general are not a very mobile workforce, and in this case do not necessarily want to move from their larger city place of work to a much smaller...
Quite often I’ve been part of global leadership teams, who come together for a face-to-face meeting somewhere in the world for maybe two long days and then all dash off to catch planes or go to other meetings at the end of the planned agenda. Nevertheless as a team,...
My current Russian client, a large and very successful petrochemicals company, has had many reorganisations in the last couple of years. One of these that they are implementing in all their production locations, is a systematic delayering. I recently designed...
When I was head of the Corporate University in Kazakhstan, one of our ‘best sellers’ was Teambuilding. And my people were pretty damn good at it. Which I guess is the reason that we had so many companies as clients and return as clients. I have always had mixed...
One of the most amusing, but nevertheless insightful exercises I have done with groups, ends up with the participants taking their clothes off. Well at least some of them. (Clothes that is, not participants). I trust I now have your attention. The exercise is to...
One of my favourite exercises with new teams is ‘Lifelines’. I’ve used it a lot through the years, especially when the team is almost all new. It has never let me down and it never fails to surprise. It sounds simple but seems to generate amazing, personal, in-depth...
Last week I ran a half-day interactive session for high-potentials at NIS, the Siberian National Oil Company in Belgrade, Serbia. They wanted to hear how corporate values can drive culture and result-oriented performance management. My case studies were three...