This is my series finale! Not so much a climatic cliff edge closing, but rather an exhortation not to enter into any change situation or campaign without a clear exit strategy. There is encouragement not to move on too fast and leave a legacy of loose ends and incompleted relationships but rather to focus on satisfaction, learning and acknowledgement. On which subject, thank you the listener for your interest and thank you to all my colleagues at Catalyst, now Sionic who have contributed...

We often spend so much of our time 'doing' that we have no energy or appetite left for having conversations about how we are 'being', or how we could be doing better. If 'feedback is the breakfast of champions', are we skipping the most important meal of the day? Many, or most, of us do. As a consequence, individuals live with their 'blind spots' unrecognised, teams get stuck in low performance modes, and change initiatives run into the rocks through avoidable 'plan continuation error'. In...

When we are helping to lead and bring about change, we rule by consent not by command. We need the support of key influencers, early adopters, our colleagues and team members. Achieving their buy-in to the change or adoption of our product is clearly critical to success. Too often however, we can find that the world does not beat a path to our door. It is said that ideas are like children: there are none a beautiful as our own. If our default style of communicating our ideas and pitching our...

How as a change expert or consultant can you create and influence the conditions for project success? In this episode I share some critical insights from Sionic's research into project success factors, and my own experience. The core message is that relentless focus on outcomes, degree of collaboration and clarity of vision are found to be present in over 90% of the projects we have analysed that were considered successful.  The assertion is that sustained attention to these factors can...

As change leaders and project managers we only tend to see as risks the problems that we have seen before and solved in the past. In my earlier days as a project and programme manager, I believed that as PM I was responsible for and owned the plan, therefore I should be its sole author. After all, I was the expert with the knowledge and experience to succeed. This belief did not always serve me well...particularly when coupled with inappropriate self-belief and optimism bias... In this...

'Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.' - Michael Jordan. Following from conversations for possibility we need to be able to manage effective conversations for opportunity, making the critical decisons that create the strategy for change. It is clearly important to make the right calls at this point: the cost of change inexorably climbs as we progress through implementation. Although we may be experts in our field, we should not believe that we have a monopoly...

'Every system is perfectly designed...to get the results it gets'. As consultants, we aim to change results towards desired outcomes. This requires us to think at the level of changing complex systems. Not merely information systems, but wider enterprise ecosytems. We need to see organisations not as simple machine bureaucracies but as complex social systems - and the larger the organisation, the more complex the system. In Sionic, we have for more than twenty years now, developed and...

"If you want to have a good idea, have a lot of them" (Mark Twain) In this podcast I share ideas on how an expert advisor, facilitator or coach can add value through generating new possibilities for action with their clients. If we only have one idea on the table, or at worst, no ideas, then our ability to arrive at the optimum solution will be severely limited.  Consider the possibility that a great skill to develop to be an effective change agent is the ability to lead and facilitate...

A good idea goes nowhere if it is not communicated well. In this episode I share the communications principles and patterns that allow you to tell a compelling business value story of your proposed change. An effective story will have powerful numbers and evidence but also a compelling emotional call to action. We need to learn to appeal to hearts as well as minds. If you take the time to craft these stories with care, you will generate positive impact and influence as a consultant or change...

"If you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there...If only you walk long enough" Unlike Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat, as expert consultants and advisors, we will always seek to start with the end in mind - defining the desired future state to move towards.  It turns out that this is another one of those 'common sense' skills that is not that common in reality. All too often, we see change programmes focussed entirely on the deliverables, or measurement scorecards...

"Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem" Russell L Ackoff words here say it all.  Our clients, managers and ourselves can all press us into actioning solutions to undefined or ill-defined problems, and we do this at our peril.  One of the key skills of any expert advisor is to take care to clarify and validate the problem before...

In this episode I delve into the secrets of rapport. In my experience this is a critical consulting skill that is often dismissed as 'chit chat'. In fact it goes to the core of how we interact with others and is a perhaps surprisingly rich, interesting and complex topic. Hopefully you will find some useful tips and tools to take away and apply with your clients, stakeholders and teams. Chris Cooke. Partner, Sionic.

The first of the 7Cs in our consulting cycle is Client.  In this episode I unpack techniques and skills to initiate the client consulting partnership.. You will learn to hold consulting conversations that are better prepared, better structured and in which you can use 'expert listening' to build understanding and trust. Creating a first and lasting impression of you as a trusted expert advisor. If you would like to know more about me, please check me out on Linked In. Chris Cooke,...

Welcome to my Consulting Conversations series. The goal throughout is to help you lead more effective conversations, whether you are a consulting professional like myself, or any one who can benefit from consulting skills, whatever your role. Hopefully you will find some value here. In this first episode, we are starting with an overarching framework. A client/consulting lifecycle model. Called the 7Cs, the cycle takes us throught considerations of Client, Clarify, Create, Change, Confirm,...