David Evans's Page

I’ve been thinking about a number of things recently that I now realise are joined up. Reviewing the work I’ve been doing with some significant corporate clients; reading books about how the brain works –like Daniel Kahnemahn’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” and Steve Peters’ “The Chimp paradox”; and talking to some of my network contacts; I have concluded that one of the key business challenges facing organisations today (admittedly, amongst many!) is how people make decisions.I suppose this was…See More

This last year has been an interesting one for those who enjoy the ‘science’ of leadership. Here are a few things I’ve learned on the subject during 2012. For context, I use the term leadership to mean "getting people to want to do things" and therefore it touches on beliefs, values, priorities and personal desires. And it is (to paraphrase Robert Cialdini) about getting things done through others.Followership. I learned a new word this year; one that is not formally recognised by my…See More

I’ve just finished a book called Transformative HR* and thoroughly enjoyed its practicality, passion and earnestness. It has some great case studies and lots of practical tips for being better in a function that often gets a bad press. Much of the criticism comes, I think, as a result of insufficient functional leadership and so I was particularly interested in a part of the book’s concluding chapter, in which the authors devote some time to considering the characteristics that make for good HR…See More

I was struck today by a conversation I had with a couple of clients. We were talking about the delivery of management and supervisory development programmes and the importance of both getting the right people onto them and of being able to assess outcomes. So, after having briefly touched on the Kirkpatrick approach to T&D evaluation I asked what happens during the employee performance appraisals.This question provoked a long discussion about the difficulties of getting appraisals and…See More

It’s something that has crept into the management lexicon over the last 15 years; everyone claims to be good at it; and, it seems to provide a ‘silver bullet’ when all else has been tried. Coaching: delivered by many; mastered by a few. But how do we know whether it really works?Well, like all learning, development and remedial tools it is pretty important to understand what problem you think you’re trying to solve with it: without a clear perspective on the issues, it’s impossible truly to…See More

This is the script from a Thought for the Day by John Bell of the Iona Community:Once upon a time the trees wanted to appoint a king over them. So they asked the olive tree first. And the olive tree refused. It didn’t want to leave behind its production of oil by which humanity was enriched.  Then the trees tried to get the fig tree to become king. But the fig tree was unwilling to leave producing fruit which was a delight those who ate it.  The trees then turned to the vine and asked if it…See More

Joining a temporary team for the delivery of a specific, high-octane, output-critical purpose is pretty interesting! I’ve just been part of a temporary team whose purpose was to deliver a credible, detailed and winning bid. We won’t know for a while whether we achieved that but some of the thoughts that occurred to me during the process chime strongly with other blogs of mine.I’d like to share five musings with you about teams brought together to work in intensive situations:Keep reminding each…See More