By Emma du Parcq and George Barnes. To be agile, in any sense, is to be able to move quickly and easily and adapt to a current situation. In organisational terms, it is about responding to a sometimes complex, uncertain and ever-changing business environment. It is also the ability to predict the near future, and…
Historically, patriarchal and colonial influences have heavily contributed to the exclusion of women and other minority groups from the professional sphere. It is enticing, and to a certain extent still appropriate, to attribute the view that women are the ‘forgotten voices’ of OD to such influences. This was certainly my own opinion before my research…
Recently we met with Fiby Francis, a previous Masters in People and OD participant and valued Roffey Park alumnus. During an incredibly deep and rich conversation, Fiby opened up about his journey throughout the MSc. He offered us an invaluable and raw account of what it took to manage his working life whilst remaining dedicated…
Google’s Year in Search 2022 revealed recently that the most searched for term was Wordle with Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and cricket in the top five terms. We also searched for Johnny Depp and Top Gun, looked up how to grow garden roses and mushrooms, checked out breeds of cats and recipes…
Over breakfast recently I heard Kate Raworth on Radio 4’s Today programme critiquing the government’s now abandoned growth-based economic policy. It reminded me how much I enjoyed reading her book Doughnut Economics which exhorts politicians – and the rest of us – to ditch the tired old economic theories that simply don’t reflect reality anymore…
The lighting of a fire How do people learn? How do you learn? If I think back to my schooldays and even university it was about listening to an authority figure (a teacher or lecturer) and trying to absorb as much of what they were telling me as possible. Luckily, I was quite good at…
It was March 2020 – the Learning Technologies conference – thousands of people gathered in the ExCel Centre in London…that was the last time I had travelled to attend a conference in search of some new ideas, inspiration, learning and hopefully some new connections. Over the following years I wasn’t sure when we would ever…
We manage and lead organisations through and with teams. If our teams are dysfunctional, so are our organisations. A high performing team is key to operational success. Throughout the last 24 months, our teams have become somewhat disjointed, with many now opting for a hybrid working model. Consequently, the need to raise and maintain team…
This week is Learning at Work Week 2022 – an initiative that encourages lifelong learning and learning cultures in work. Like many other week or day-long events, it often leaves me pondering “wait…what are we doing the rest of the year”? However, there is certainly power in celebrating the impact that continuous learning can have…
Since 1946 Roffey Park Institute has been at the forefront of training provision for the workplace, offering a raft of programmes to develop individuals, teams and organisations. Learning has changed considerably in recent years, with students seeking more flexible methods of teaching and input. This has been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, and at Roffey…
At Roffey Park Institute we’ve dedicated the last 75 years to be at the forefront of dialogic and group learning approaches. But what does ‘dialogic’ actually mean? Here is a brief guide to that and some of the other terms we use to describe adult learning. Action learning sets This is where small groups of…
March has been Women’s History Month and the focus has been acknowledging how far women have come in business and, rightly so, celebrating what women have achieved. It was only in 1928 that women were given the same voting rights as men in Britain and Switzerland was only granted suffrage in 1971. I don’t know…
