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  Daily Thoughts

July 26th, 2015

‘Like fish in the water’ is the real employee engagement.

I don’t think Employee Engagement is a score following a survey, or a series of pulpits for ‘employee voice’, or […]
July 25th, 2015

The unintended consequences of a well intended decision

Short reflection, again, for the slow-down period of Daily Thoughts. When intending to obtain A, how many times do we […]
July 24th, 2015

‘Grasps the facts, misses the meaning’: The Leadership Dyslexia upon us

Did we ever, ever have more facts around us? Certainly not. We talk about Big Data. It is of course […]
July 23rd, 2015

Seducing minds, versus hiring people. Just imagine.

I like the word seducing when referring to working for somebody, a company, a person, a cause, an organization. If […]
July 22nd, 2015

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 […]
July 21st, 2015

It’s still Day One: the wining philosophy of Day Two and Day Two Thousand

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has a famous and well quoted line: ‘It’s just Day one’ (of the company). And […]
July 20th, 2015

With more time, this post would be shorter

With more time, the report would be shorter, the powerpoint file smaller, and the strategic plan slimmer. Not longer, bigger […]
July 19th, 2015

We, ourselves are the biggest exporters of problems to 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 […]
July 18th, 2015

I fail by my circumstances, I succeed by my great disposition. (‘Don’t challenge it, it works for me’)

There is something quite pompously called ‘the fundamental attribution distortion’, one of the bias or mental traps that are in […]
July 17th, 2015

The many ‘me’ inside Me need some discovery: have a go. They all seem to come for dinner.

Continuing the conversation on leadership. Yes, we could go forever. Let me make an assumption: that miraculously you’ll have some […]
July 16th, 2015

Your most important list of personal assets. Take time. Now?

There are may ways to list our own assets. And that is something very healthy to do. Practice it from […]
July 15th, 2015

What do these have in common? Designing organizations, aquariums and fish soups.

Commenting on the communist legacy, a soviet academic Oleg Bogomolov, who must have known a thing or two about things […]
July 14th, 2015

We work with them very closely, we are very familiar with each other, that is why perhaps we don’t know each other well.

Months ago I found myself in front of a large audience composed by the highest ranks of the HR function […]
July 13th, 2015

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

There is a great difference between copying and reverse engineering. Many people in business wish they could copy the great […]
July 12th, 2015

Aspiration: the healthy restlessness of the ‘Is there a better way?’

Complacency is always a risk, more so when we profess to be immune to it. Sometimes, achieving organizational and business […]
July 11th, 2015

1/3 fixed, 2/3 fuzzy: try this organizational diet for a culture of empowerment and ownership.

Imagine a near nirvana, perfect scenario in which you have the right and the best people in the organization, intellectually, […]
July 10th, 2015

The ‘change method’ is dead, long live the method.

Ok, the method never dies, because ‘it’s a trick used twice’. People wanting to go from A to Z need […]
July 9th, 2015

A culture of ownership when you don’t own the company (or even when you do)

It has always been a Great Hypothesis. It goes like this: ‘if employees acted as owners, as if they owned […]
July 8th, 2015

What I learnt from the monks: a little anthropology of leadership and space in one page.

My  friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]
July 7th, 2015

Entering as a question mark, leaving as a period

We all were born as questions. The old saying that ‘children enter school as question marks and leave as full […]