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  Daily Thoughts

July 9th, 2014

The company on a treadmill: devise routine Stress Tests

Banks have had stress tests (imposed) to see how they would cope with difficult market conditions. For example, in the […]
July 8th, 2014

‘It depends’: when ethics, leadership, and values become flexible and adaptable

‘As a partner in the communities in which we operate, we believe the company has a responsibility to conduct itself […]
July 7th, 2014

Collective Leadership: Two Acid Tests.

I call Collective Leadership that state in the evolution of management teams or leadership teams when the power of the […]
July 6th, 2014

Trust is like pregnancy. You can’t have a bit of it

Statements such as ‘I don’t trust him too much’, in reality, mean I don’t trust him at all. The ‘too […]
July 5th, 2014

Cultures are not created by training. Barclays is missing the point.

A piece in The Guardian announces that Barclays is going to send 2100 Compliance Staff to the Judge Business School […]
July 4th, 2014

Full of Embassies: The company is not an Internal Diplomatic Service

People in organizations spend a lot of time representing somebody else or something else. It feels sometimes that the company […]
July 3rd, 2014

Top Influencers 2, Top Leadership 1 (Hierarchical power in the organization is half of the ‘peer-to-peer’ power)

Let me share a piece of our own research that has just come up from the oven. In a 1200 […]
July 2nd, 2014

For every empowering leader, there must be followers who want to be empowered

In all these years of organizational consulting, I have found leaders who don’t empower their people, but, I have found […]
July 1st, 2014

The death of the charismatic leadership has been grossly exaggerated

As Mark Twain said of himself, ‘The death of the charismatic leader has been grossly exaggerated’. The problem is that […]
June 30th, 2014

The self-management train has left the station. The journey is very bumpy. Arrivals TBD. Watch out for updates

The historical existence of several layers of management in any organization may be related to its size. In a command […]
June 29th, 2014

When the only thing you have is a hammer

‘When the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’ If you have a predetermined view […]
June 28th, 2014

Faster horses

Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ‘Faster horses strategies’ […]
June 27th, 2014

Maximising, optimising, satisficing

These three things are different. They represent three forms of decision making, but I suggest they also represent three different […]
June 26th, 2014

Make your trade off(s) transparent

In my experience, people can understand budget cuts, but there are several types of acceptance, leading to several levels of […]
June 25th, 2014

To learn how to create a culture of customer focus, use one.

Disclaimer: I don’t have shares in the company, or discounts, or commissions! No place I know can match Chateauform  (http://chateauform.com) […]
June 24th, 2014

The three ‘magic’ words: transparency, clarity and fairness

These three organizational ‘magic words’ manage to get mixed up a lot. It’s hard to believe because they are so […]
June 23rd, 2014

So, what do you do Joe?

Spot the differences at the dinner party or barbeque. So, what do you do Joe?. [You must start with ‘so’ […]
June 22nd, 2014

Trust is tribal, it’s ‘people like me’, it’s horizontal

Consistently over years, the Edelman’s Trust Barometer keeps telling us that the greatest source of trust inside the organization belongs […]
June 21st, 2014

When management is overweight, leadership may be starving

I must confess I have never been 100% comfortable with the traditional distinction by Warren Bennis between leaders and managers […]
June 20th, 2014

Not even wrong

Consistently attributed to physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who had no time for sloppy thinking, ‘not even wrong’ has become a category […]