Dr Nick Waggett

I enjoy photography and it is one of my main sources, and expressions, of creativity. I like to incorporate photography and imagery into my consultancy work as a way of opening up conversations and coming at organizational dilemmas from a fresh perspective. My approach is to help people make sense of the challenges they face, find new ways to address them and perform effectively. In this way, they are left with additional capacities to meet new and different challenges. A meaningful image creates something new out of what life presents you with. Andrew Paynter, Photographer Working with  imagery of all kinds is a source of great potential to unstick teams, organizations and leaders, and help them towards creative and effective responses to the rapidly evolving demands facing all sectors. If the answer to new market challenges was obvious then everyone would be doing it! The use of imagery is a way in which the hidden and ‘beneath the surface’ can be made visible and thought about....

  Like, what colour is a conversation with a colleague? All those bits that might not be reflected in the calendar. The research I undertook for my Professional Doctorate (completed in 2017) explored how technology alters organizational processes and structures. The above quote relates to the use of the Outlook calendar to manage workload in a health clinic. Some of the findings anticipated the transformation of work that was accelerated by the pandemic and enabled by technology.  For example, I showed how technology transports work across an organization’s usual boundaries of time (9-5) and place (the office). The affordances of technology (i.e. what it enables) have many positive aspects, such as maintaining delivery of critical services during a global pandemic. Society’s capacity to deliver its core functions was many times greater in 2020 that it was 10 or 50 years earlier. Some impacts were unexpected – such as accelerating the decline in physical newspaper sales beca...

Creativity is central to organizational success Creativity is crucial in responding to change, innovation, growth, re-structuring and challenges in the market or operating environment. Creativity in these situations is needed to enable new thoughts, connections and ideas to arise, and to avoid getting stuck in old and unhelpful patterns of working.  Think of the sports team that has a set way of playing that has worked for them but who can’t adapt to other teams improving or using new techniques. A once successful team will steadily, or even rapidly, become second best. Doing the same thing over and over - when it has been shown to be ineffective or even damaging - is a sign of something unhealthy going on in the team, organization or business. To unstick  and move to a new, healthy and productive position requires curiosity, creativity and the generation of new ways of working and connecting with the client, customer or audience.  The problem is that these processes – ch...

Nick Waggett   (2012)   Ghosts in the care home: the nature of relationships in a home for people with learning disabilities,   Journal of Social Work Practice,   26:4,   443-457   Abstract: This paper considers the complex task of working with adults with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour in a care home and the impact on relationships within the staff group and wider organisation. Examples are drawn from an organisational consultation to a home with a history of disputes, grievances and sick leave. The metaphor of ghosts is used to explore the processes by which the residents' own traumatic histories come to be played out by the care home staff. The paper concludes that an increased understanding of organisational processes in the residential care sector may help staff form more helpful relationships with service users and hence lead to better outcomes. Keywords: process consultation, learning disabilities, projective identificati...