Author: Sam Dods

November 9, 2018 Sam Dods

How’s business? Everything on track to achieve all your goals? Or are you facing a few challenges? And if you are facing challenges how do you know where to focus your effort? Businesses and the environment in which they operate are evolving at an increasing rate so the challenges they face are constantly changing. We’ve…

January 26, 2018 Sam Dods

At work and home, we’re making decisions all the time; sometimes making simple decisions by ourselves and sometimes working with groups to make complex decisions with significant implications. While a number of approaches have been developed to improve decision making many fallacies still exist including: Intelligent people make better decisions Groups make better decisions The…

January 17, 2018 Sam Dods

Instagram’s thirteen employees created 27 million users and a $1Bn valuation at acquisition within 15 months. Paypal’s thirty employees created 13 million customers and a $1.5Bn valuation at acquisition, beating Billpoint, a joint venture between eBay and Wells Fargo. Both companies prevailed against larger, better-resourced competition – but they succeeded through focus – laser-sharp alignment…

September 13, 2017 Sam Dods

  “Competitive advantage doesn’t go to the nations that focus on creating companies, it goes to nations that focus on scaling companies.” Sherry Coutu, The Scale-up Report, Nov 2014   In her 2014 report, Sherry Coutu describes the range of challenges that are encountered by companies attempting to scale their businesses. But every company experiences…

June 15, 2017 Sam Dods

  What is organisational development, how does culture and a sense of purpose impact performance, what is organisational design and what does Koru mean?   These and a number of other issues around improving organisational effectiveness are discussed in Sam Dods’ interview with Alina Trabattoni.   Have you had any experienced with OD or is…

April 20, 2017 Sam Dods

What does “culture” mean to you?   Is it some sort of “excellence” in the arts like a night out at the opera? Is it the traits associated with a historic period like Roman culture? Or is it what we take to be the characteristic behaviours and beliefs of an ethnic group or country?  …

April 6, 2017 Sam Dods

Start-ups often have a clear idea what they want to achieve and why – they have purpose.   But sometimes in the rush to get going the organisation’s design is forgotten. And even when it is considered at the outset, organisations often fail to evolve the design as they grow and change.   This can…

March 30, 2017 Sam Dods

  What gets you out of bed in the morning?   Are you looking forward to doing something? Meeting friends, training for a competition or going to work?   Or is it because you have to? We should meet colleagues, do some training or go to work.   The same activities but very different experiences:…

January 25, 2017 Sam Dods

  To TRUST, or NOT to TRUST, that is the question.   This may seem to be an irreverent misquote of Shakespeare’s immortal line but the question really is important because of the implications it has for us, our organisations and wider society.   WITHOUT TRUST we live lives of paranoid isolation and organisations rely…

January 13, 2017 Sam Dods

A quick Google search on improving organisational effectiveness results in an almost infinite list approaches – often promising simple solutions with a limited number of steps.   While it can be quite bewildering there are some common themes: the importance of people, culture and business systems feature in many of them.   I’ve published posts…