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  Daily Thoughts

February 14th, 2019

‘Every Corpse on Everest was once an extremely motivated person’

I don’t know where this comes from but it’s in posts and posters all over. It’s perhaps one of these […]

February 13th, 2019

Clues to mobilize people inside the corporate tent, come from outside that tent.

People reading these Daily Thoughts may be used to common themes, indeed. After all, I am not writing about nuclear […]

February 8th, 2019

Kids characters are shaped in the playground, not the classroom

And employee characters, and company culture, and all the unwritten rules of the organization are shaped in the cafeteria, the […]

February 7th, 2019

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 […]

February 6th, 2019

There is a strong case to start reading a book backwards. And other rambling comments

Given our growing impatience and limited attention span (our minds are overheated in the filtering of information, like traffic control […]

February 4th, 2019

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 […]

February 1st, 2019

Purpose kidnapped?

Suddenly purpose is back. We are told that Millennials want purpose. Which may be true. As much as many other […]

January 31st, 2019

‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’

Attention Chief Transformation Officers, Offices of Transformation, Change Management Units, and Change Offices, and Projects of Future A,B,C,. Units of […]

January 29th, 2019

‘Victorious warriors win first and then go to war’ (coaching session circa 500 BC)

The full quote: ‘Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to […]

January 28th, 2019

And they took the British flag with them

Yesterday, my wife and I said goodbye to a good friend from France who works as a high level executive […]

January 24th, 2019

The person saying ‘we need to make sure that’ is probably the less likely person who will do anything ‘to make sure that’

Wisdom Nomads go form meeting to meeting. ‘We need to make sure that’, ‘we have to know how this fits […]

January 23rd, 2019

Most mechanics of behavioural change sold to organizations, are deceitful armchair inventions.

Behavioural change is still presented in many quarters with the same language as installing a piece of software. Or maybe […]

January 22nd, 2019

Confronted with dysfunctionality, a reorganization solution must be the last resource, not the first.

Most of our organizational problems are behavioural Structural answers hardly solve behavioural problems. Amalgamating A and B because A and […]

January 21st, 2019

Catastrophic success (may even have a celebration party)

I was used to the concept of catastrophic failure, but not catastrophic success, until I read an article in the […]

December 14th, 2018

Daily Thoughts takes a break, but you don’t have to

Hello from The Chalfont Project Daily Thoughts is in pause mode until the New Year. You can still browse and […]

December 10th, 2018

Leaders and Change: 12 Rules. (1) Stop admiring the problem

Some organizations seem to have a love affair with problems. They love their disruptive and furtive nature.  Secret encounters in […]

December 4th, 2018

Peter’s world in a reasonable day.

I could  not sleep, it was almost unbearable. Then I woke up and  the weather was horrible. The traffic was […]

December 3rd, 2018

8 hard arguments on culture for people who think this is is fluffy, woolly, soft stuff

  Culture is the difference between 30 people making a decision in 30 days, and 3 people making the same […]

November 30th, 2018

Teamocracies are tired, networkracies win the day.

For as long as anybody can remember in management history, the team has been highlighted as the unquestionable form of […]

November 29th, 2018

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 […]