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  Daily Thoughts

March 19th, 2020

COVID-19: From coping and adapting, to making things extraordinarily better. And surprising ourselves.

Nassim Taleb has written about ‘antifragile’ as the quality of ‘growing from disorder’. He says that the opposite to fragile […]
March 16th, 2020

So, what do you do Joe?

Spot the difference at the dinner party or barbeque. So, what do you do Joe? [You must start with ‘so’ […]
March 14th, 2020

Not even wrong

Consistently attributed to physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who had no time for sloppy thinking, ‘not even wrong’ has become a category […]
March 13th, 2020

Gene and Tony are coming next week

If you work in a corporation with headquarters and affiliates, scattered in many places, or with international sites, you will […]
March 12th, 2020

Gandhi’s concept of Western Civilization

Interrogated by a journalist: ‘Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?’, Mr Gandhi answered:  ‘I think that it […]
March 11th, 2020

Initiative fatigue, leading to exhaustion, leading to switching off

Many organizations seem to run layers of parallel initiatives, all directed at noble goals, and in many cases, without talking […]
March 10th, 2020

Occupy the (corporate) streets

The traditional thinking about divisional and functional structures within organizations, which were born of the need for specialization and a […]
March 9th, 2020

A bit of inefficiency is very efficient

Cost cutting, cutting to the bone, cutting resources down to the bare minimum is praised as efficient. But it’s not. […]
March 7th, 2020

There is only one customer, and he pays the bills

I am your customer, you are my customer. When I need to provide you with something, you are my customer. […]
March 6th, 2020

‘It’s our policy’ is often the worst policy

A while ago, my brand new iPhone was stolen at the airport, having left it behind on a table for […]
March 5th, 2020

‘Where there is too much vision, people perish faster’.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”, says the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. This quote comes in […]
March 4th, 2020

Three ways to get approval from your CEO or your Leadership Team

Way number 1: My team has come up with these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you […]
March 3rd, 2020

We will ‘360 degree feedback’ you

Readers of my books and clients will be aware that I am not very fond of 360 degree feedback used […]
March 2nd, 2020

In praise of tension. Consensus as a permanent state in the organization, is a collective coma

The trouble with consensus is that it contains all the risks of poor thinking and all the possible cognitive biases, […]
February 29th, 2020

If you marry a summary, you’ll breed bullet points. Life becomes much easier, if hardly real.

‘The exercise was very rich, everybody participated deeply, the walls were full of flipcharts with stuff. So many ideas floating […]
February 28th, 2020

Heroes on the payroll: the good news and the bad news

Some people have a hero within. They have this tremendous ability to mobilise energy, jump in when big issues present, […]
February 27th, 2020

Segment, segment, segment. Add these three words to the dictionary of Internal Communications.

If you look at political marketing, and the place to look for a serious PhD in communications and their segmentation […]
February 26th, 2020

Madam, the ribbon is free.

Discovering’ an old article that I wrote years ago, when I used to have a management column in a monthly […]
February 25th, 2020

‘Democratic organization’ means well, but it is an unfortunate term.

With the best of intentions, to call an organization a Democracy is an abuse of the term, unless of course, […]
February 24th, 2020

Reclaiming a concept that has lost weight in the business organization: vocation

Vocation is often defined as ‘a strong feeling’ to do something, a job, a career, an occupation, to dedicate one’s […]