Salem Marafi

This is a little sad, but as 2011 came to a close I started to get an inkling of excitement … not about 2012 and new beginnings … no, no. I was excited about completing a whole year’s worth of tracking every fils that came in or out of my proverbial purse. Perhaps what I [...]

Update: I’ve posted all my favourite models from this book. If you’ve been following, you’ll have already picked up a copy for yourself. It’s a quirky and fun little toolbox. Passing the torch on this one tomorrow! Hope you’ve enjoyed the posts ;] A friend of mine just gifted me one of the quirkiest books: [...]

The Swiss Cheese Model is one which describes accident causation as a series of events which must occur in a specific order and manner for an accident to occur. A stack of unique individual slices of cheese is analogous to an organisational system – where each layer contains a gap. Accidents occur when a process [...]

The personal performance model is one that needs to be used like a survey – for a period of three weeks, fill this model rating each category (three of them) on a scale of 0 – 10. To do this, every day rate your tasks (as a group) by answering the following questions: Want to: [...]

How do you go about remembering all the information you get and want to keep … and how do you keep it in memory for a long time? Long term memory has two components: retrievability and stability. In other words, how close is the memory to our consciousness and how deeply engrained is the information [...]

At some point, we all fall to one of two misfortunes: Being tasked with a monstrous and seemingly impossible job. Hitting ourselves over the head with a blunt object hoping that an excruciatingly boring job comes to an end Somewhere in between those two lies a dynamic sweet spot; always keeping you on your toes [...]

The Hersey-Blanchard Model is a tool to manage and direct people based on situational factors. The model consists of two parts: a process (top) and a matrix (graph). The matrix is a tool designed for leaders and reads from right to left starting with S1 (Situation 1: Directing) to S4 (Situation 4: Delegating). The process [...]

The model above was developed by Drexler and Sibbet, founders of The Grove consulting.The model is self explanatory really, so I won’t dive into details. Follow the steps from 1 – 7 that take you through the stages of creating and sustaining a team. Each stage has outcomes based on failure to resolve or succeeding [...]

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a classic game theory problem that shows how communication can drastically affect outcomes. The image is self explanatory: two prisoners are offered a deal, if one confesses the other gets 20 years, if none confess both get 1 year, and if both confess they each get 5 years in prison. Trust [...]

In the early 20th Century, a major development in philosophy took place called the Linguistic Turn. Not to bore you into a state of comatose ~ the linguistic turn is based on the notion that language constitutes reality and is not a transparent medium for thought. In layman’s terms: your language defines the way you [...]