Ian Howell

Recruit for skills & harmony matters

Recently I have been reflecting on the crucial importance of recruiting for skills and fit to maintain and encourage a spirit of challenge within an organisation while still ensuring that shared values are maintained. 

In change it is change leadership rather than change management that matters most

Having been invited present for just 30 minutes at an industry conference this month on the topic of change it served as an excellent catalyst to consider what are the 3-ultimate ingredient’s in delivering successful change in organisations.

We are all facing unprecedented levels of change, which has been well reported in this newsletter over its life, and if this is one certainly, we can all agree on, it’s that speed of change is getting faster and faster.

Better coaching drives results

This section heading is not about bringing in external resource to ‘sheep-dip’ a sales team as some sort of miracle cure. Short-term impact at best is all this will achieved. Coaching is a long-term thing, think football or even Olympian success. Great sales teams invariably have great sales leaders coaching, cajoling and encouraging belief in their team. 

Creating the Learning Habit

It has been and continues to be, one of my life’s pleasure’s, to be able to impact positively the lives of the people we meet on our Rocket Programmes. Over the years, we have been creating performance environments in organisations across the world and our reach and impact never fails to make feel humble and grateful for the privileged position I have in my people development role. Mostly the learning is confined to developing peoples’ working approach; however, the “wider” lessons we introduce inevitably spill over into broader areas of our delegates lives.

Better coaching drives results

Coaching is a long-term thing, think football or even Olympian success. Great sales teams invariably have great sales leaders coaching, cajoling and encouraging belief in their team. 

Insights from our globe-trotting training & development team

Over recent years, I have had the pleasure to take the reach of the Rocket Performance Group to a truly international realm. While it is easy to be myopic and always think about the UK, it is fascinating to realise that these international clients are similarly preparing for an increasingly uncertain future.  In the UK, we are not alone!

Which Blue are you?

It was with great pleasure that I watched the Women’s Boat Race this year. The annual battle between the ‘Blue” boats has been quite rightly been improved by the addition of the women’s race, which since 2015, now takes place on the same day as the men’s Boat Race. 

Are you using your team to beat the recession?

Chatting with the many business leaders I meet the talk is always of how they are looking to beat the recession, either through ‘hunkering down’, finding new markets or reducing costs. Nobody can deny the harsh realities that have come with falling demand resulting in approaches that seek to minimise the impact of recessionary conditions on shareholder returns. Sadly too this has been a euphemism for Voluntary Redundancy and operational budget reductions. But what if you could find a way of actually achieving more with less resources?