Music in the Office (and Neurodiversity)

There’s an article in The Guardian today about music in the office. I find this kind of discussion fascinating because it is essentially a neurodiversity problem – what works for one person’s brain doesn’t work for another. As a rule, we humans are very prone to assume everyone else’s experience of the world is the same as ours, that everyone … Read More

Clean in Sales – Starting a Sales Meeting

Following last week’s post describing a sales meeting, I’ve been asked why I don’t start the meeting out by asking the prospect for permission to do things in a different way. The idea being that after explaining my view that the traditional sales meeting setup doesn’t serve anyone, I’d get their buy-in to running the meeting with Clean being more … Read More

Clean in Sales Example – The Big Meeting

People have expressed interest in how we use Clean Language in sales, so I thought it would be helpful to occasionally discuss specific scenarios, to give a feeling of what it is like in practice. I’ve described one meeting of perhaps 20 we’ll have with this company over the next 2 years. In retrospect, it is possibly the one where … Read More

Contempt vs Curiosity at Work

I believe there are moments that happen every day in organisations, moments that dramatically undermine a company’s success, but are hardly noticed.  That moment is when innovation and creativity is crushed beneath contempt, rather than fertilised by curiosity. Contempt is the hidden killer of success and yet we’re all guilty. I was attending a course, and there was a comment made … Read More

Clean Language and the Adoption Lifecycle

There’s been some discussion in the Clean Language groups about how to promote Clean. I see Clean as a disruptive innovation, and as such you can use various frameworks from the Technology sector for inspiration. One that I’m particularly fond of is the Technology Adoption Lifecycle popularised by Geoffrey Moore. Rather than write a long post about it, I thought … Read More

A review of the “Adventures in Clean” event

Over the May bank holiday weekend I attended “Adventures in Clean” and thought it was worth writing up. Why I attended I really wanted to go because it featured what I view as some of the rockstars of the Clean world: James Lawley Penny Tompkins Caitlin Walker Marian Way Shaun Hotchkiss I’ve done Systemic Modelling with Caitlin and Marian but … Read More