Dr Steve Morlidge...Thinker, Writer, Speaker Email & Phone Number

Uninspired? Confused? Frustrated? Stuck?I was all these things 20 years ago, but not now. Today my passion is to share what I have learned to help you be the most effective, motivated and fulfilled version of yourself at work.Back in the day I was working as Financial Controller in a blue chip multinational company. My team and I had maxed out on ‘best practice’. This was great, but there was still so much that we did, to ourselves and other people in the business, that was dumb, wasteful and promoted dysfunctional behaviour. And the big stinking heap of pain called ‘the budget’ sat at the top of the pile.It was dispiriting.This all changed in 1998 when I was introduced to the founders of the Beyond Budgeting movement who were in the process of setting up a collaborative research group looking for organisations that budgeted better.What we quickly learned was that we were asking the wrong question. The problem wasn’t how well budgeting was done. Instead of trying to do the wrong thing righter, the inspirational companies we found showed us that we needed a complete rethink.What I learned that much of what I had been taught was the product of steam age thinking with shaky foundations. And this started a personal learning and discovery, fuelled by extensive experience of things that I had messed up in the past and the opportunity provided by being a founder member of Unilever’s Finance Academy.It started with trying to understand why what these innovative businesses did worked so brilliantly well. None of them had learned what to do from peers, consultants, or books, which inspired me to search for the scientific basis of their intuitions.That lead me into systems theory and cybernetics but with the clear intent of finding ways of helping normal people doing normal jobs apply what I learned. So, I used some cybernetic control concepts and brushed up on my statistics to help people forecast and to structure work better. I dipped into cognitive science to help design better ways of understanding and communicating performance. And right now, I am working on ways of using fuzzy logic to help develop better ways of dealing with uncertainty and the structured application of judgement in decision making.Many of these ideas and practices are collected in my books and articles. And I cofounded a software business to improve the quality of supply chain forecasts using methods I developed. But I love nothing more than sharing my ideas and knowledge face to face with people who want to learn and improve.If that is you, get in touch.