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  Daily Thoughts

October 15th, 2015

The world is flat, leadership is global, and I want to go home.

Where is home? Ask this question to an Irishman or Irish woman. Even if they have been living abroad for […]
October 14th, 2015

Value conversation or cost conversation? One departure, two avenues, several destinations.

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Oscar Wilde It’s hard to have a conversation […]
October 13th, 2015

Reclaiming Conversations in an Alone Together world

In a study conducted with Fortune 100 companies, and quoted in Sherry Turkle’s new book ‘Reclaiming Conversations’, the following statistics […]
October 12th, 2015

Value systems should be aspirational and behavioural, not just a shopping list of the values or behaviours you don’t have.

When I see a corporate value system containing teamwork, openness and innovation, my cynical, uneducated and undomesticated baloney detector system […]
October 11th, 2015

The ‘Great Man’ model of leadership is well and alive, despite largely exaggerated accounts of its death

The Great Man Theory was born in Scotland, the child of philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 –1881) – “The […]
October 10th, 2015

My spell check changes ‘methodology’ to ‘mythology’ automatically. Are the gods telling me something?

Method is a trick that has been used twice, people say. Having a method for anything is hardly a negative […]
October 9th, 2015

Empowerment: the muddle. The wrong conversation, until you start unpacking the concept and dismantling the house of buzzwords.

The ‘expectations muddle’ of empowerment has different shapes and flavours: I expect you to do something but you don’t think […]
October 8th, 2015

The leadership team tipping point: the arrow points South.

Some top management teams and leadership teams are created by the Internal Organization Chart Robot Officer, that is, they are […]
October 7th, 2015

‘The top leaders are not specific, they don’t tell us what they expect’. This is very good news.

Talking about leadership teams at the top, I often hear ‘they launch those words but the don’t give specifics’, or […]
October 6th, 2015

Q: ‘What’s the best innovation in Medicine in recent years? A: ‘The chair’

That’s how Gregorio Maranon put it. Maranon (1887-1960) was a Spanish physician of the ‘humanistic school’. Meaning, more than a […]
October 5th, 2015

It may not be inevitable. It may be that people believe it is inevitable. Grab the script. Change the script.

Scholars of social movements and also of all forms of radicalization processes agree that, quite constantly, there seems to be […]
October 3rd, 2015

Reclaim the non-utilitarian conversation in the organization. It has the greatest utility.

We have made conversations inside the organization (only?) purely transactional. There must be a utility. What’s the goal? What’s the […]
October 2nd, 2015

The ‘Training ex Machina’ delusion. Beware of training solutions for all seasons.

In the old Greek tragedies, when the plot became an unsolvable mess, a God (or few of them) came down […]
October 1st, 2015

Benchmarking deviance inside the organization.

A few years ago, community workers for the Save the Children organisation, an internationally recognised non governmental organisation or NGO, […]
September 30th, 2015

Company vs. Community. Digging the roots of words for a possible reunion.

Company: Where companions are. Companion = com + panis in Latin, that is with bread, sharing bread of food. “Travelling […]
September 29th, 2015

A Gordian Knot Brigade in each organization. All swords on deck.

Get the best minds and hearts people. Get them together. Not permanent, but more than simply ad hoc. Let them […]
September 28th, 2015

Trust is an unfair affair. Don’t apply linear arguments. All trust that is solid can melt in the air.

Trust is the most unforgiving, unfair and disruptive phenomenon in the organization. It takes a while to build, it may […]
September 27th, 2015

The Bad Apples Theory on colossal business fiascos. (It’s the basket, stupid!)

Volkswagen has declared that the Diesel fiasco and the massive installation of software, built in to deceive outputs and pass […]
September 26th, 2015

Shhh! I am playing John Cage’s 4’33 as part of my leadership development.

In an unusual break between meetings in London, I found myself in Foyles, the transformed, iconic bookstore, where I bought […]
September 25th, 2015

The ‘Call me Peter’ School of leadership.

I am reconstructing here a fictitious reply from a middle-senior manager to his CEO, in the way he expressed to […]