List

Search Results for: influencers

Top Influencers 2, Top Leadership 1 (Hierarchical power in the organization is half of the ‘peer-to-peer’ power)

Let me share a piece of our own research that has just come up from the oven. In a 1200 people, pan European company, in the financial sector, we have compared the power of the five person Leadership Team, in terms of messaging and engagement, rea[...]

The influencers have arrived! What can we do?

Many years ago companies started to say ‘we are organized into project teams’. Professional projectisation was the thing. Until it became commoditised and meant nothing. No project team was equal to another. One has project leaders with budget ac[...]

The influencers have arrived! What can we do?

Many years ago companies started to say ‘we are organized in project teams’. Professional projectization was the thing. Until it become commoditized and meant nothing. No project team was equal to another. One has project leaders with budget acco[...]

Top Influencers 2, Top Leadership 1 (Hierarchical power in the organization is half of the ‘peer-to-peer’ power)

Let me share a piece of our own research that has just come up from the oven. In a 1200 people, pan European company, in the financial sector, we have compared the power  of the five person Leadership Team, in terms of messaging and engagement, r[...]

Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks - If you don't lead via peer-to-peer networks, you're only driving your car in first gear.

Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the WMD of change and transformation in organizations. I mean Weap[...]

Culture is in the A list, the one where ‘work’ sits. Not in the B list (‘when I have time, after A’)

Culture is not a project, something to do on top of normal work, an extra, something to get your hands around once the big stuff has been done. Certainly culture is not an ‘HR function topic’ but a business one, with all the help of HR and non[...]

In friends (colleagues, pals, mates, buddies) I trust. Trust in organizations is horizontal. Our management systems are vertical. ‘Houston, we have a problem!’

Get yourself a copy of the Edelman Trust Barometer. The Edelman company produces an excellent annual report on trust (organizations, in[...]

Yes, there is a new workplace now. It’s called culture.

If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of work, the post-pandemic work, the overrated back to normal, don’t start with hybrid versus non-hybrid, flexible versus non-flexible, zooms or no zooms, work from home or wor[...]

Monochrome cultures (and their Royal Courts)

Possibility is perhaps the most beautiful word in management. There are organizations in which possibilities seem exhausted, work is an extrapolation from day to day, people do their jobs, perhaps well, but there are no expectations of going outside [...]

12 simple rules of social change, organizational (culture) or societal (2/2)

Continuing my revised 12 laws of social change at a scale. Very simple laws apply to any large scale change including the one inside[...]

12 simple rules of social change, organizational (culture) or societal (1/2)

My revised 12 rules of social change at a scale.  These very simple laws apply to any large scale change including the one inside organizations, cultural change and transformation and any other labels.
  1. Cater for many motivations. Don’[...]

Too busy getting ready, no time to go

A  client, senior manager, mentioned to me recently that his company spent a disproportionate amount of time ‘getting ready’. He was referring to a product launch. He was critical, yet he found it difficult to push back because how could anybody[...]

‘Sustainable but not too much’ is the best state of the healthy organization

Sustainability of change, of cultural initiatives, of well intentioned corporate improvements is the key challenge. We are all quite energetic at initiating, creating a good push, setting great bonfires, and then quietly resigning to a prolonged fadi[...]

My last Employee Engagement model (7/7): Activists on the payroll.

In this model, the employee (1) is an activist, (2) largely working peer-to-peer, and (3) progressing towards (if not arriving at) self-management. Let me qualify the three components. 1) Activist. This means acting. The word activist contains the[...]

For every problem, the Victorians had a building

A few years ago, the BBC broadcast a series called ‘How we built Britain’, presented by the veteran David Dimbleby. In the episode dedicated to the Victorians, he said something, almost in passing, which has stuck in my mind since: ‘For every p[...]

A new word for corporate life: de-corporatization

In my world, ‘corporate’ is synonymous with big structure, big processes and big systems. Of course, it is not its strict meaning, which is purely legal in the sense of ‘authorised to act as an entity’. But in the day to day meaning, we ha[...]

The 4 hats of leadership in the modern organization

The trouble with the talking about leadership is that we have made a big basket of it and thrown in anything that looked and smelled like people making other people do something. Talking about leadership in general, makes for a great discussion bu[...]

The 6 stages of management teams. The origin and evolution of these species on one page.

Stage 1: The Accidental Management team. The team is composed by whoever reports to the top. You are in that place, at that time? You are part of the management team. Period. Well, not quite a team but a juxtaposition of direct repor[...]

Your most important list of personal assets. Take time. Now?

There are many ways to list our own assets. And that's something that is very healthy to do. Practice it from time to time, not just when talking to recruiters.
  1. What we’ve done. This is the first thing that comes to m[...]

To search my website, please use the form below.

  Daily Thoughts

September 27th, 2023

Redefining Talent Wealth

The war on talent McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what it […]
September 8th, 2023

What I Learnt From The Monks: A Little Anthropology Of Leadership And Space On One Page

My friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]
August 23rd, 2023

Can We Rescue DEI From Its Trap (The Label)?

Most of the problems and challenges in organizations, together with most of the solutions, are behavioural in nature. It’s about […]
August 10th, 2023

Restructuring to force collaboration, is likely to create more anxiety than collaboration. Structural solutions for behavioural problems hardly work.

Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. ´A people´ don’t talk to ´B people´; if […]
July 18th, 2023

The ‘Impossible To Disagree With’ School Of Management

‘Good leaders have empathy, respect employees and set the example. If you want to change things, you need to have […]
June 29th, 2023

Large scale change is not small scale change repeated many times. Small wins repeated are lots of small wins.

Large scale change, as a series of cascading small scale interventions (often under the philosophy of ‘small wins’) has dominated […]
June 6th, 2023

Culture change is not long and difficult. But we make it so…

I suppose the question is how long is long and how difficult is difficult? In general, business and organizational consulting have […]
May 19th, 2023

Value is an overused term in business and, as such, it’s becoming meaningless

Value, as usually used, means transactional monetary value. Usually it doesn’t mean intrinsic value, or value per se. For example, […]
May 4th, 2023

The importance of ‘critical thinking.’ Your own critical thinking is more effective at making your workplace better than any generic employee survey.

Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket […]
April 21st, 2023

´Busy-Ness’ Is A Trap

I went to a big conference where I was introduced by the chairman like this: “Welcome everybody. Lovely to have […]
April 14th, 2023

Training and culture change. The love affair that ends in tears.

It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that if we just put individuals […]
April 11th, 2023

Teamocracies and Networkracies have different citizens: in-Habitants in team-work, riders in net-work

The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]
April 5th, 2023

3 Ways To Get Approval From Your CEO Or Your Leadership Team

Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us […]
March 29th, 2023

A Cheat Sheet To Create A Social Movement Tip = to shape organizational culture since both are the same.

Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]
March 16th, 2023

Critical Thinking Self-Test: A 10 Point Health Check For Your Organization And Yourself. If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply.

Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure […]
March 9th, 2023

A culture of safety or a culture of training in safety?

Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated […]
March 2nd, 2023

Empowerment is an output. If you can visualize it, you can craft it.

The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? Employee […]
February 24th, 2023

A simple question will jumpstart your organization into change. It will also save you from months of pain spent reorganizing your people and teams.

The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, […]
February 20th, 2023

Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks – If you don’t lead via peer-to-peer networks, you’re only driving your car in first gear.

Peer-to-peer work, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the […]
February 7th, 2023

Write a script, not a strategic plan

If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, […]
January 26th, 2023

3 self-sabotaging mechanisms in organizations

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]
January 10th, 2023

Who should be involved in culture change? All inclusive versus going where the energy is.

Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s […]
December 23rd, 2022

Tell what won’t change – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they […]
December 16th, 2022

Scale It – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

When creating effective change in any organization, there are 40 rules that, in my experience, are the key between success […]
December 5th, 2022

Assets & Strengths Base – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

For more than 30 years I have been involved in ‘change’ in organizations. Again and again, some fundamental principles, and often […]
November 25th, 2022

Campaign It… is 1 of my 40 rules of change

When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change […]
October 31st, 2022

Hybrid or not hybrid? That’s not the question…

Culture is the new workplace If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of […]
October 24th, 2022

‘Powered by Viral Change™’: A Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

When we started to work on Viral Change™, as a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change, and […]
October 14th, 2022

Corporate tribes, intellectual ghettos and open window policies

We talk a lot about silos in organizations usually in the context of Business Units or divisions. But these are not […]
October 7th, 2022

Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is […]