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  Daily Thoughts

December 5th, 2014

A ‘culture of X’ is not the same as a culture of ‘training on X’. Safety is a good example

Organizations have traditionally used a three-legged approach to creating a  ‘culture’: Communications, training and compliance. None of those in isolation […]
December 4th, 2014

The Single Bad Apple behavioural theory: careless about statistical logic

At the end of the summer, I had to stay for a very short period in a hospital, that is […]
December 3rd, 2014

Leadership’s hearing problems

‘And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music’. Friedrich […]
December 2nd, 2014

Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong.

Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket one: Working conditions, Flexibility at work, Pay and perks, Reward and recognition, […]
December 1st, 2014

External consultants and internal managers share the same four-step ladder of engagment with others.

Whether you are an external consultant, or a manager within an organization, you have a four step ladder as a […]
November 30th, 2014

The healing smell of a corporate bonfire. (The Hernan Cortes Exit strategy).

The British retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) has ‘Plan A’ as the title for their vast corporate and social responsibility […]
November 29th, 2014

The ‘Keep Moving’ strategy always wins.

A while ago, I was told an anecdote about an MBA student who returned to his alma mater for a […]
November 28th, 2014

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 […]
November 27th, 2014

The company as an information highway? Managers as regulators of information traffic

The organization is a social network. Social networks are conduits of  information. There is no doubt that information goes up […]
November 26th, 2014

Visit the Google graveyard and pay your respects

If you go to the Orkut page within Google, you get this note: ‘Orkut was officially shut down on September […]
November 25th, 2014

‘What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not’.

This phrase is attributed to the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the same who described some arguments or theories as so bad […]
November 24th, 2014

Management ‘post-hoc fallacies’, but damn good stories!

In Latin ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc’. Free translation: B follows A, so A must be the cause of B. […]
November 23rd, 2014

‘Paths, not works’. A philosopher’s metaphor that explains well our leadership challenges.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) requested before his death that the collection of his writings be called ‘Paths, not works’. He […]
November 22nd, 2014

‘Simplify, then exaggerate’: a saying from journalism, with different versions in our organizations

‘First simplify, then exaggerate’ is a norm attributed to the praxis of Journalism. It has the merit of condensing clearly […]
November 21st, 2014

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 […]
November 20th, 2014

My local bakery inspired me

I used to live in a small village in England where we just had one, also small, very popular bakery. […]
November 19th, 2014

Not even bottom-up. Certainly not top-down. Lasting organizational change is a polycentric social movement, or it isn’t.

In organizational life we are used to the dichotomy ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom up’, for example, when we talk about change. […]
November 18th, 2014

Big Banks have been fined again. A tiny fraction of the fines with the right behavioural change approach would change their cultures for ever.

It seems like the Weekly News about Banks Bad Behaviour. This time about  big fines. ‘Between fines and legal costs, […]
November 17th, 2014

Failure has become a badge of honour in some places. Or at least, something to show on the CV as an asset.

A recent article in the New York Times refers to a Conference/initiative in San Francisco where the agenda is built […]
November 16th, 2014

‘I told them once; they didn’t understand. I told them twice; they didn’t understand. I told them three times … and I understood’

I don’t know where this quote comes from, but I have always seen it as a source of reflection on […]