List

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June 6th, 2018

May Change Management have a great funeral

I good friend, expert in Communications, has created her new website with a prominent quote of mine, ‘Change Management as […]
June 5th, 2018

The painting is a beautiful, delicate masterpiece. The artist’s workshop is a mess.

The process of creativity can be very messy. In fact, it is perhaps necessarily messy. Like the artist’s workshop. The […]
June 4th, 2018

The alternative Post-mortem of failed change programmes. (and 5 of 5): we communicate too much.

In this miniseries I have shared so far four inconvenient truths uncovered by the forensics of ‘change management’ failure: Too […]
May 31st, 2018

The alternative Post-mortem of failed change programmes. (4 of 5): Too much vision, not lack of it

Forth in the mini series:  uncovering of truths of the failure of change and transformation programmes, via a reverse engineering. […]
May 30th, 2018

The alternative Post-mortem of failed change programmes. (3 of 5): Antibodies to start with.

Third installment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Finding: […]
May 29th, 2018

The alternative Post-mortem of failed change programmes. (2 of 5): It was fireworks and corporate flash mobs

Second installment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Many […]
May 28th, 2018

The alternative Post-mortem of failed change programmes. (1 of 5): There were too many people involved, and too much debate. Not the opposite.

This five part mini-series (!) is not glamourous. It tries to uncover some inconvenient truths via a reverse engineering of […]
May 25th, 2018

In my shopping list for new leaders, circa 2018 (and 5 of 5): Mobilizers

Managing? Leading?  Probably one of the worse dichotomies ever invented. Another day. Engaging? Motivating? Committing? Consider Mobilizing! It means…what it […]
May 24th, 2018

In my shopping list for new leaders, circa 2018 (4 of 5): Invitational people

I have held the view for many years that management is ‘by invitation’ (Disruptive Ideas, 2008). For example, I am […]
May 23rd, 2018

In my shopping list for new leaders, circa 2018 (3 of 5): Bridge builders

The word Pontifex (Pontiff in English) is the term associated with the Pope (twitter account…err.. @pontifex, what else?). I love […]
May 22nd, 2018

In my shopping list for new leaders, circa 2018 (2 of 5): Reframing

I have referred before to  George Lakoff’s work and his little book ‘Don’t think of an elephant’, which makes the […]
May 21st, 2018

In my shopping list for new leaders, circa 2018 (1 of 5): Depolarization

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of many who have described this, but his articulation is the one widely quoted: “The […]
May 18th, 2018

Organisational culture shaping. Counterinsurgency field manual (and 5 of 5): Be a bit inefficient if you want to be effective. Or you can be boring

The problem with super efficacy and super efficiency is that what works for a Swiss watch does not work for […]
May 17th, 2018

Organisational culture shaping. Counterinsurgency field manual (4 of 5): Structural changes hardly solve behavioural problems. It’s a trap.

Structural answers to organizational problems are very unlikely to succeed. Division A people don’t collaborate with Division B people, so […]
May 16th, 2018

Organisational culture shaping. Counterinsurgency field manual (3 of 5): don’t do half social (unless you want to kill a project)

Would you join a Facebok with 100 users? A Yammer with few entries? A Twitter where only a few tweets? […]
May 15th, 2018

Organisational culture shaping. Counterinsurgency field manual (2 of 5): Learn from mistakes (only if your manager does too).

Learning from mistakes, make mistakes, learn, it’s OK, mistakes are OK, we are human, if we did not make mistakes […]
May 14th, 2018

Organizational culture, Counterinsurgency Field Manual (1 of 5): What to do with toxic people.

Toxic people. A sample. The top 12 to watch: The bully who is not challenged The bully who is not […]
May 10th, 2018

News from the front line

Yesterday was International Receptionist Day. Perhaps it was buried in a myriad of International Days of Something. But the receptionist […]
May 9th, 2018

The geography of change. Where to start.

Read. Take a deep breath. Read again. Keep breathing, think about this. ‘The system will prevent itself from solving the […]
May 8th, 2018

Organizational structures that (dis) aggregate by design

New organizations, and old ones in the business of transforming themselves, would be better off learning by heart these two […]