Blueprints turns 21 years old this year
25,000 hours of Learnings about Organisational Success
As Blueprints turns 21 years old this year, it’s a special time to reflect on my approximate 25,000 hours of learnings with my cultural, transformational and strategic alignment of businesses’ journey – in the unique world of using art and science to integrate 140 corporate clients’ evolutions in 36 countries.
Many of my learnings have been counterintuitive, which have surprised both me and the clients we serve. This is the summary of my top 10 discoveries:
• Employees care far more about the wellbeing and success of their employers than leadership give them credit for.
• There is an inherent desire in the hearts of everyone to strive for a better collective future – if only there were a way and the knowhow.
• Trends show clear signs of the need for people to be empowered across all levels to unleash innovations.
• Individual decision-making motivations are often unduly and subtly self-serving.
• A clear sense of organisational purpose is becoming particularly important for the younger cohorts of incumbents.
• The complexity of interdependent dynamics within organisations is virtually impossible to fully understand, without objective tracking metrics.
• An effective ideas management system is essential for the enablement of continuous improvement in practical ways.
• People are desperate to have a genuine voice, that is duly heard and acknowledged, along with feedback loops on actions for improvement.
• Suboptimal systems, procedures and bureaucracies are the biggest killers of organisational effectiveness, cohesion and agility.
• “Culture” is a misnomer, as it has as many meanings as there are people, is traditionally poorly implemented and should be rearticulated as “Philosophy” or of another name.
My primary motivation to get up every morning, closely followed by the intellectual stimulation of this work, is to positively shift the needles – with proof – of each and every business community we serve. Whether we do or do not provide direct services to you, here’s hoping you found the above insightful.
Guy Martin is the founder & Managing Director of Blueprints: Which has enabled business leaders to drive measurable high-performance across 130 blue-chip organisations in 36 countries
