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  Daily Thoughts

February 21st, 2020

“A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.”

Chinese proverb that is, what else? I wish we could be as crystal clear when it comes to the characteristics […]
February 20th, 2020

Some working places are ‘non-places’, and as inspiring as Clinical Isolation Units

Working in a ‘non-place place’ can’t deliver inspirations and aspirations. Ideas need infections, not Clinical Isolation Units. Marc Auge is […]
February 19th, 2020

Games or Rituals? Anthropology inside the company has valuable things to say

Organizational anthropology sounds like a grandiose academic affair. You may imagine the anthropologists armed with notebooks and cameras capturing the […]
February 18th, 2020

Science advances by a series of funerals. And some management practices are not feeling very well

‘Science advances by a series of funerals’. This is how John Brockman, founder of The Edge, and editor of a […]
February 17th, 2020

Navel-gazing (Nombrilisme in French, sounds much better) is constant in the organization. The issue is not to deny it, but to fight it.

There is so much to fix and manage inside the organization that the task could be never ending. Soon, and […]
February 15th, 2020

‘Change management’ the forgotten statement: this will not change

‘Change management’ usually forgets a vital component: the things that don’t change or need to change, or, indeed, must not […]
February 14th, 2020

The Tragedy of the Obvious (part 2). The obvious things in the ‘management of change’ (and still we can’t see the donkeys)

I shared yesterday the tragedy of the obvious. The obvious that is so obvious that we don’t see it. Read […]
February 13th, 2020

The Tragedy of the Obvious

A man was leading a caravan of donkeys and crossing the border almost every day, coming back with apparently the […]
February 12th, 2020

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

Employee empowerment is an output, an outcome. If you start thinking of employee empowerment as an input, something you are […]
February 10th, 2020

Stuck is the worst status. Worse than being wrong.

You are stuck when confronted with dilemmas. Maybe contradictory business decisions, or maybe the need to choose between two evils. […]
February 8th, 2020

Not all high caffeine shots of motivation work well. Inspirational stories have pros and cons

Business loves inspirational stories. The world of entrepreneurship and leadership constantly draw on stories. Many people love sports analogies. Some […]
February 7th, 2020

We, ourselves are the biggest exporters of problems in the organizations we work for

The great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote about the early 20th Century Spanish society as being ‘led by […]
February 6th, 2020

Don’t transplant or import a successful management model; reverse engineer it, then pause

There is a big difference between copying and reverse engineering. Many people in business wish they could copy the great […]
February 5th, 2020

Tribal brands that teach us a lesson

This is an anthropology report. We’ve found this tribe: the people all wear the same multi-coloured clothes. They paint their […]
February 4th, 2020

Defining ourselves by what we are against, does not advance the cause of the for

I have always been a bit wary of people who repeatedly define themselves by what they are against. It makes […]
February 3rd, 2020

Lead in Poetry, manage in Prose

I am of course paraphrasing Mario Cuomo’s ‘You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose’. Cuomo (1932-2015) was an American […]
January 31st, 2020

On the day the UK leaves the European Union

Friends, my heart is broken today. The UK is leaving the European Union tonight at 11:00 pm continental time. Many […]
January 30th, 2020

The organization’s collective self-belief is often hidden. Leaders need to hear the unsaid.

Some organisations, or groups inside the organisation, suffer from lack of self belief. You could say weak self esteem. The […]
January 29th, 2020

My Stockholm (airport) Syndrome

Arriving at the clean and clinical Stockholm airport, my pre-booked taxi is failing me. I have some time to spare […]
January 28th, 2020

The ‘who-does-what’ and the ‘who-knows-what’ models of the organization, lead to different worlds.

If you had to build an organization from scratch, or re-design one, you would have options about some models to […]