List

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January 28th, 2017

‘If’, the poem. (Management version circa. 2017)

If instead of a company, you had and led a community. If instead of employees you had internal social activists. […]

January 27th, 2017

Thank God for management stereotypes. They solve many of our thinking problems (for lousy managers, that is)

Let’s try this. Somebody who asks lots of questions becomes ‘a micro-manager’, which solves the problem of my questioning whether […]

January 26th, 2017

Thinking abdicated

There are many situations in organization and corporate life when either the collective or others with authority solve our decision […]

January 24th, 2017

Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ was not in the script.

Most of what is very good comes from discarding the standard or the good itself. The best scripts I have […]

January 23rd, 2017

Don’t preach diversity, practice it. Start with mundane process rules.

In the day when Tim Crook, Apple’s CEO, had to send a note to everybody in the company reminding them […]

January 23rd, 2017

Corporate grammar could learn from Obama’s spelling guidelines

“This isn’t a period, it’s a comma, in the continuing story that is America,” Obama said when leaving office. Well, […]

January 20th, 2017

Along came a spider.

(Friday 20.01.17 AD, 45th President of the USA, Inauguration Day) Conscious that this only makes sense to the Anglo-Saxon tribes […]

January 19th, 2017

In ‘people like us’ we trust, others must try harder, and leaders should go to the optometrist.

 Edelman Trust barometer is out again. Extraordinary piece of work. The highlights? Trust is at its lowest, everywhere. The media […]

January 17th, 2017

Is leadership so elusive? Or only in the hands of academics?

A recent publication around the Mighty Davos meeting portrays the views of five expert academics on the topic of leadership […]

January 16th, 2017

Archaeologists usually don’t build houses. We have lots of archaeologists on the payroll

Over years of consulting, I have realised that the best leaders I know, never talk about their previous companies, what […]

January 14th, 2017

The Daily Me, information bubbles, and keeping sane.

We naturally retreat to comfort zones. If we didn’t, we would not survive, physically or psychologically. We live in Confirmation […]

January 13th, 2017

Bold leadership pays off. It can also be killed by those who are highly paid to be professionally afraid

Years ago, I persuaded a pharmaceutical client to make three bold moves in one: (1)   To create a New Product […]

January 12th, 2017

Obama’s farewell speech has calls to actions relevant to organizations. Most can be summarised: take charge, get involved.

Obama’s farewell speech contains enough reflective materials, statements and arguments to spend hours of learning, no matter where you are […]

January 11th, 2017

Quick self-test on guts to call out non-compliance.

I’d like you to do this quick exercise: Part 1. Read this edited version of a summary in a 2008 […]

January 10th, 2017

Thought leadership is making people think, or there is not much thought or leadership. Maybe journalistic leadership?

True thought leadership is not about conveying new ideas, showing directions for innovation and offloading the latest trends. There is […]

January 9th, 2017

The only change worth changing, is people’s lives. Why are we afraid to say it?

Business organizations have grown in a traditional alpha male model where emotions are weaknesses, irrationality is banned and ‘the human […]

January 7th, 2017

Trust is (mostly) horizontal. Our organizations are (mostly) vertical. No wonder…

‘People like me’ is a category on its own right in the Edelman Trust Barometer. Multiple sets of data point […]

January 6th, 2017

Behaviours are the syntax of the organization. Values are the grammar. Your space in the world is the story.

Your linguistic and behavioural frame must be in sync. Story, values and behaviours need to be solid and well connected. […]

January 5th, 2017

When I hear ‘this is a culture of consensus’, my Trouble Detector starts blipping

Organizations can have the flu. And it can become epidemic. The epidemic of consensus is one. The conversation often starts […]

January 4th, 2017

Forward to the Past: If this is what your brand-new strategy smells like, do the honourable thing. Kill it.

Your big leadership choice for 2017 is between being the guardian of what has already happened, or the prophet of […]