Do you like dags?

Brad Pitt's incredible performance in the film Snatch does neatly segue into something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently:

Dogs.

I’ve been around them my whole life, and I consider myself very much a dog person, and having studied animal behaviour, I know they teach us so much:

Boundaries, communication, respect, patience, time management, love, solution-orientated thinking - and so much more.

Woody is my 15 month old fox red Labrador and, truly, is man’s best friend. Every day he demonstrates that his sense of his surroundings is much better than mine.

Often, I’m just happily walking along, calmly enjoying sights and sounds, pretty much oblivious to much else, when Woody stops, puts his nose in the air, and clearly senses that something isn’t quite right, or a stranger is about to appear.

And inevitably, he's almost always right.

I’m currently doing some pretty in-depth advisory work for two global organisations – one in finance, one in the pharmaceutical sector - and both recognised the need to change some behaviours in their leadership teams, and more widely across the organisation's culture. 

I’m often in the privileged position where I am able to see how the organisation thinks as a whole.

And often, that’s the most efficacious place to start – not with looking at specific behaviours, which most often gets overly complicated - but get the thinking right, and the behaviours flow from there.

However, very often it’s not about changing the thinking, but helping people to see the things they cannot see.

My way of working has always been about looking at the shadows, beyond the things that are getting everyone's attention; the areas people aren't focusing on, which have been missed or ignored. For each of us, and the organisations we work in, it's more often than not where the 'real work' is.

If only Woody could talk, I’m confident he’d be able to do the same for me…