David Pembroke Interviews Mark for the GovComms Podcast
Engaging discussion on how to improve performance. All the planning often gets in the way, it drives activity focus rather than impact on outcomes. Also where customer centricity fits into our plans. Slowing down all this planning and activity to focus and realising the performance improvement we are looking for…
The full discussion here:
Two Short Clips
From theinterview with David Pembroke for GovComms – The Future of Government Communication Podcast. EP196.
Better work can start with doing less
In a world of constant urgency, better work can start with doing less – more deliberately. We can slow down a little to focus on how to improve performance.
Host David Pembroke is joined by Mark Hocknell, consultant, author and speaker, to explore why ‘shallow’ work is creeping into organisations and what it is costing performance.
David and Mark discuss the pressure leaders place on teams to produce more activity faster, how that drives task-focused planning instead of outcomes, and why genuine improvement needs deep thinking, evidence and step-change interventions.
KEY POINTS
- Shallow work misses what matters. Quick answers and time pressure can crowd out deep thinking, leading to plans that lack insight and fail to shift outcomes.
- Leaders set the tempo. When leaders pass down urgency and firefighting, teams lose the space to focus on outcomes and meaningful improvement.
Peformance Culture and the Leader’s Role
Culture is a Symptom, Not a Cause
- Prioritise outcomes over activity. Clear outcomes help teams stop chasing task lists and instead measure what is changing for communities and customers.
Eight Steps to a High Performance Organisation
- Continuous improvement is step change. Improvement rarely happens by doing the same thing ‘a bit better’ every day. It needs deliberate interventions and learning from evidence.
Also have a look at, How to close the Stratgic Gap.
