3D Juggling 506: The great lie

Jane writes: "According to a leading business expert speaking this week ‘Britain would flourish as an international trading nation outside the economic shackles of the European Union’*.  This view contradicts the key argument posed by some that leaving the EU would wreck the UK’s trade prospects.

Take a step back.  Think about some of the things the current government is aiming to do to achieve the level of savings it has committed to find, and to put customers’ at the heart of decision making about how services are delivered.   If you are involved in the design and delivery of services that have been provided by the public sector for many years, how does this feel?

What are you doing to ensure that your service, assuming it is of value, continues to be available when there’s no money to deliver it from within your current organisation?  Are you waiting to see what happens while you worry about the impact that leaving the ‘safety’ of the public sector may have on you?  Or are you talking with the other people and organisations that are, or could, be interested in what you do, with the intention of finding new and sustainable ways of doing it?

Received wisdom may be that there’s a need for your service, that you know best how to deliver it, and that customers want it to be delivered by you – that’s there’s no better alternative.  That may be a great lie.  Your service may be able to flourish independently.  You probably know how to make this happen, although you may need some help to work out how. And if you're in the church or voluntary sector, who do you need to be talking to now?

We have worked with many individuals and teams to help them develop alternative futures.  How could we help you?

*Quote from Ruth Lea, Economist and Director of Global Vision.

If it would be useful to talk this through, call us to talk more.  And if you have a 3D Juggling idea, we'd love to hear from you.

Discuss this week's juggling at http://www.3dcoaching.blogspot.com/


© 2010 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

3D Juggling 504: The shocking truth about waste

Jane writes: "In the paper today (19 Nov 2010) was an article titled: ‘The shocking truth of Whitehall waste’.  This waste included £26,000 spent on training staff how to have difficult conversations. The training was designed to ‘help staff have increased confidence and capability’.  Unfortunately it didn't say for what purpose – the specific difference that this investment was intended to achieve.

OK, there are other ways that increased confidence and capability could be achieved. And we all need to find ways that have no cost, or very little cost, for our organisations/customers.

Maybe this is all about choices. Do we help staff to have conversations about the things they need to be talking about or, by not doing so, allow them to keep avoiding difficult issues for fear of the consequences? And these consequences are likely to be for them and for others. What if they are being bullied or harassed? What if their ideas are being stolen? How about when they discover things that could damage their organisation's reputation?

There are many interesting and challenging situations and behaviours emerging in organisations as they face austerity measures. It's not easy to tell people about the need to fundamentally change the service they have been providing for many years, or about redundancies.

So, do we help people learn how to have difficult conversations safely? Or do we all suffer the consequences -- which include all the time that gets wasted on trying to avoid the inevitable and recover when it happens?

Tell us what you think, and share a coffee with us to ask us how we can support you in finding ways of working with your organisation, or your customers, in ways that are affordable and deliver recognised improvements."

Discuss this week's juggling at http://www.3dcoaching.blogspot.com/


© 2010 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

3D Juggling 500: Review Time

This is the 500th edition of 3D Juggling and some of you have been with us all the way. Thank you. We value your company as much as those who have joined us this week.  Welcome. Here's a timely look at the archives.



In 2003, we wrote: 

3D Juggling 139: Adjusting nuts

"Do you remember when a computer with the power of a laptop took up several rooms? In those early days, a computer had some problem and the maintenance guru was called. The machine itself was an enormous size, but the glitch was sorted in minutes. The company were rather surprised to receive a hefty bill for a 2 minute job. When challenged, the response came back: "It's knowing which nut to adjust."

TVs, computers and other fiddly pieces of equipment often come with that great button: Reset to default. So when we've twiddled and tweaked and it's still a challenge, we can undo our work and start again.

Unfortunately we don't have reset switches, but are complicated machines, balancing who we are - our body, mind, emotions and spirit with all the factors which make our lives - money, work, family, home etc. Often, deep down we do know what to adjust to make the whole juggling act easier. It's often a question of whether we are willing or able to face it. And if we can't find the answer, often an objective friend or a coach can ask enough insightful questions to begin to find which nut to adjust!"

This is timely because of last week's spending review in the UK.  This will have an impact on individuals and on teams - including those that are 'safe' - who will have to bear the guilt and adapt how they work with those that are not.

If your job is disappearing, it may be time to think very differently about what the future might look like.  That's what we've been doing in Career Makeovers for many years.

If you're working with teams that are disappearing or know they will look very different in the future, they re-enter Tuckman's Storming phase.  This can be a time to acknowledge the reality and move from fighting the change to knowing what the team is here for now.

If you need to manage fallout in any way, Action Learning can help you to have honest conversations and work out what you need to be asking who.

Talk to us about how we can help you, within your budget, know which nut to adjust.

Discuss this week's juggling at http://www.3dcoaching.blogspot.com/


© 2010 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

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3D Juggling 495: Big Conversations

Jane writes: "Do you remember when Tony Blair launched a 'Big Conversation' consultation exercise. Back in November  2003?  Blair said that "We must engage people about the choices needed”.  At the time critics of the idea dismissed it as a New Labour "gimmick”.  The Conservative head of policy co-ordination said "I hope he really does listen. The trouble is all the evidence is he won't”.

The idea of the big conversation hasn’t gone away – in fact it’s grown.   At its international conference later this year the International Coach Federation is introducing five Global Conversations to be held concurrently over a two-and-a-half-hour period, taking the place of a traditional keynote address.  These will be pretty big conversations!

So who does your organisation need to be having big conversations with? Whose voice do you need to hear in order to truly understand how to adapt and change in order to remain competitive and effective? Is it your customers, your suppliers, your competitors, funders? Or is it policymakers, politicians, local communities?

Big conversations need a purpose. They also need an appropriate environment and the right people need to be engaged. Here are some of the principles that you need to consider:

•    Create a hospitable place
•    Set the context
•    Explore questions that matter
•    Encourage everyone's participation
•    Cross pollinate and connect diverse perspectives
•    Listen together for patterns, insights and deeper questions
•    Harvest and share collective discoveries

Imagine what you could do if you could see and understand all the connections, dependencies, synergies and opportunities which at the moment are hidden from you, or remain undiscovered. People like to be listened to, and heard, and understood, and they like to know that they have had some influence about things that are important to them. Why not take advantage of that?"

If you would like us to help you explore how to have big conversations, come out for a cup of coffee with us to talk about how we can help you.  We'll pay!


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© 2010 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely.  Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

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3D Juggling 479: Apocalypse, Milk and Honey

We're just back from our annual team residential st Little Gidding and this is a great opportunity to say thank you to Jeremy Clare, Caroline Wolf and Elizabeth Turnbull who have now left the 3D core team. We'll be introducing you our new colleagues over the next few weeks.

Su writes: I did some career coaching with a friend recently. She was exceptionally honest with me and described what the jobs market was like in the banking sector. What she described was a post-apocalyptic landscape: a deserted, bleak and hostile environment. It was scary and tough, not for the faint-hearted. It was certainly not a place I would like to have spent time looking for a job. She described it absolutely, as it was to her. I worked with her, questioning her, finding out more but essentially that was it. A land of no hope.

That was her reality.

I decided we might take a different approach. We left the land of no hope and instead we did a job search. We looked for the jobs that were there – within minutes we had found several possibilities that she had the skills to do and more or less fitted her expectations. This was a very different landscape to the one we had been discussing. There were suitable vacancies, there were interesting new avenues to ponder, there were exciting potentials. To be honest, it was not a land of milk and honey, with endless opportunities to mull over and choose from. But it was different to the reality which had been described to me.

She had done job searches before: but she was doing them from her end-of-the world land. She had seen the jobs we found in our search but discounted them immediately. She had not thought about the potential that they offered: only that they wouldn’t work for her. She looked at the jobs market through post-apocalyptic eyes and saw only what she expected to see.

It is easy to build up a reality and continuously find fuel to stoke that version of events. It could be in terms of looking for a job, or tackling an issue in the workplace, or dealing with someone we find difficult. Our lands of no hope can almost become comfortable places to inhabit, and finding there is an alternative may initially be alarming.

So how to break out of that land? We need objective evidence, a mind that is open to the possibilities, and often a critical friend to walk with us. Do you?"

If this is your reality, there's still time to book on the Career Makeover Masterclass in Bletchley on 5th June.

Love this? If this is the reality in your organisation and you'd like to talk about how to support staff through the transition, call us and we can meet for a coffee. It's on us!

Discuss this week's juggling at http://www.3dcoaching.blogspot.com/


© 2010 3D Coaching Ltd
May be distributed freely. Please retain contact details: www.3dcoaching.com and send a copy/ link to info@3dcoaching.com

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