David Nyeste

Learn from the Best  Over the years I have been able to contribute to numerous projects in various roles. Some of them were large ones with international teams and dozens of consultants working around the globe. Some were small in scope, short in timeline, or regionally focused. Some I have overseen and delivered with client staff only. A few were gigantic, long running transformations of entire corporate structures and cultures. Regardless of the set up of any project there are a few crucial ingredients that need to be incorporated into the project set up and execution to enable success. Projects lacking these vital ingredients will lag behind deadlines, miss budget targets and in the worst of cases fail to achieve their desired results. I don't necessarily consider myself one of 'the best'. However I certainly had the opportunity to gather rich experience by witnessing leadership excellence at its best over many years in different environments and situations. Here's m...

Meetings, Minefields and Mindfields Today I will elaborate on why it is necessary to have a strategy for focused work. In case you don't have a clear strategy for how you can finish complicated, demanding tasks on a regular basis, you should start to think up a solution for this problem immediately. How and why I do this is revealed in the next lines. This will hopefully stay an exception, but let's start with a rant: it often strikes me with what level of ease and with what level of total disregard for people's time and schedule some colleagues invite to meetings of questionable purpose on short notice. By 'questionable purpose' I mean those meetings, where you don't have any agenda, you don't get any info on your expected input or why you're being invited in the first place and of course -the classic- : no documentation of the outcome. My impression is that as I proceed through my work-week those spontaneously created 'alignment-meetings' keep ...

Meetings are the Mirror of the Soul of an Organization  The way meetings are held in a company tells a lot about the corporation's culture and its values. Most large or medium sized companies have some kind of formal values they are committed to and a mission statement, that clarifies the purpose of the organization. However it is in everyday work life only that one will truly experience how much an organization and its members live up to these values and how purposeful they act upon their vision and mission on a daily basis. When I set up and invite to meetings, I like to provide the participants with three basic elements in advance: 1. The purpose of the meeting (Why are we meeting? Why are you invited?) 2. The outcome and participants' expected input (What will be different after the meeting? What is expected/required that you bring to the table?) 3. Some basic agenda, if applicable. (Plan of time and topics) Though most do, not all my meetings have a formal agenda. That is...