List

Behavioural Change

  • Training is to addition what culture change is to multiplication. Organization’s arithmetic Part 1 (of 3)

    So if you have a ‘culture change programme’ that is based on adding more and more people going through a […]

  • 10 principles behind culture, behind ‘Employer Branding’, and behind anything that has to do with the DNA of an organization

    Today I have presented my views on Employer Branding at a conference in Berlin. The trouble with this area is […]

  • Many cultural change efforts fail out of a mathematical mistake

    Originally published a few months ago, I wanted to resend this as an opportunity to re-read and reflect. I hope […]

  • Change management theories have only interpreted the organizational world. The point however is to actually change it.

    Since we all love conceptual frames, it is not surprising that in the area of ‘change management’ there are a […]

  • The power of absurdity in fighting absurdity. We should use more of it.

    A couple of years ago, a client of mine in mainland continental Europe moved to new, pristine, shinny offices. Suddenly […]

  • End of Week Summary: Behavioural Change (part 2)

    Happy weekend! Welcome to part 2 of our look at behavioural change. For all the most recent posts on this […]

  • End of Week Summary: Behavioural Change

    Happy weekend to all our Daily Thoughts readers! This week at we have been focusing on Behaviours – after all, […]

  • Organizations: The Enemy Within (3/3). What the real enemies look like.

    My final topic of these 3 parts:  We have a full mythology of what can and can’t be done in […]

  • Daily Thoughts run up to end of the year (3/5) The real readiness trick is behavioural. The rest is commentary.

    The Four readiness drivers I have mentioned in previous days are: Rapid Reaction and Reconfiguration (RRR) Focus on your ‘social […]

  • The curious case of management bad sync: the video and the audio don’t match

    This is a pattern that I encounter with many of my clients. Top and less top leadership, of the progressive […]

  • The ‘quick win-win’ theory, and tactics, often lead to people being put off quickly

    One of the most conventionally accepted theories of change, perhaps better called ‘tactics of change’, says that it is important […]

  • Defeatism and cynicism are two toxic sisters that need to be challenged. Every minute of silence is a terrible complicity in the erosion of hope.

    A slow growth cancer in organizations. People unnecessarily and gratuitously condemning the company to an impossible future: we will never […]

  • What do I do with a resistant manager? Find five non-resistant colleagues, then…

    A CEO asked me recently: what do you do with a manager who does not embrace or support change, in […]

  • Re-structuring to force collaboration, is likely to create more anxiety than collaboration. Structural solutions for behavioural problems hardly work.

    Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. A people don’t talk to B people; if […]

  • Agree conceptually on values, then abandon the labels as fast as you can and focus on their behavioural translation

    In yesterday’s Daily Thought I suggested that leadership competence-based systems may be better at providing a language than at creating […]

  • Happiness in the organization is an outcome not an input. Prescribing happiness is a behavioural nonsense.

    You can’t inject happiness in the organization. You can’t put happiness capsules in the water supply. You can’t prescribe happiness, […]

  • I am going to vote vs. will you please vote. The organizational lessons from political campaigning (and a pinch of behavioural economics)

    Tried and tested in political marketing/mobilization/campaigning, many times, that ‘intention to vote’ increases the probability of other people voting by […]

  • Leadership in organizations is about mobilizing people. The leader is a ‘Social Arsonist’

    “A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.”—Fred Ross Fred Ross (1910-1992) American community […]

  • No hiding leadership: ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek’

    I often use Obama’s some of his 2008 speeches lines to ask leaders about their sense of destiny, small d […]

  • Values don’t pre-exist, their behaviours do, then values are born. E.g: there is no such thing as kindness.

    There is no such a thing as kindness. Unless, and until, somebody does something to another human being who can […]

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      Daily Thoughts

    September 27th, 2023

    Redefining Talent Wealth

    The war on talent McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what it […]
    September 8th, 2023

    What I Learnt From The Monks: A Little Anthropology Of Leadership And Space On One Page

    My friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]
    August 23rd, 2023

    Can We Rescue DEI From Its Trap (The Label)?

    Most of the problems and challenges in organizations, together with most of the solutions, are behavioural in nature. It’s about […]
    August 10th, 2023

    Restructuring to force collaboration, is likely to create more anxiety than collaboration. Structural solutions for behavioural problems hardly work.

    Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. ´A people´ don’t talk to ´B people´; if […]
    July 18th, 2023

    The ‘Impossible To Disagree With’ School Of Management

    ‘Good leaders have empathy, respect employees and set the example. If you want to change things, you need to have […]
    June 29th, 2023

    Large scale change is not small scale change repeated many times. Small wins repeated are lots of small wins.

    Large scale change, as a series of cascading small scale interventions (often under the philosophy of ‘small wins’) has dominated […]
    June 6th, 2023

    Culture change is not long and difficult. But we make it so…

    I suppose the question is how long is long and how difficult is difficult? In general, business and organizational consulting have […]
    May 19th, 2023

    Value is an overused term in business and, as such, it’s becoming meaningless

    Value, as usually used, means transactional monetary value. Usually it doesn’t mean intrinsic value, or value per se. For example, […]
    May 4th, 2023

    The importance of ‘critical thinking.’ Your own critical thinking is more effective at making your workplace better than any generic employee survey.

    Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket […]
    April 21st, 2023

    ´Busy-Ness’ Is A Trap

    I went to a big conference where I was introduced by the chairman like this: “Welcome everybody. Lovely to have […]
    April 14th, 2023

    Training and culture change. The love affair that ends in tears.

    It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that if we just put individuals […]
    April 11th, 2023

    Teamocracies and Networkracies have different citizens: in-Habitants in team-work, riders in net-work

    The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]
    April 5th, 2023

    3 Ways To Get Approval From Your CEO Or Your Leadership Team

    Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us […]
    March 29th, 2023

    A Cheat Sheet To Create A Social Movement Tip = to shape organizational culture since both are the same.

    Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]
    March 16th, 2023

    Critical Thinking Self-Test: A 10 Point Health Check For Your Organization And Yourself. If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply.

    Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure […]
    March 9th, 2023

    A culture of safety or a culture of training in safety?

    Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated […]
    March 2nd, 2023

    Empowerment is an output. If you can visualize it, you can craft it.

    The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? Employee […]
    February 24th, 2023

    A simple question will jumpstart your organization into change. It will also save you from months of pain spent reorganizing your people and teams.

    The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, […]
    February 20th, 2023

    Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks – If you don’t lead via peer-to-peer networks, you’re only driving your car in first gear.

    Peer-to-peer work, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the […]
    February 7th, 2023

    Write a script, not a strategic plan

    If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, […]
    January 26th, 2023

    3 self-sabotaging mechanisms in organizations

    Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]
    January 10th, 2023

    Who should be involved in culture change? All inclusive versus going where the energy is.

    Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s […]
    December 23rd, 2022

    Tell what won’t change – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

    In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they […]
    December 16th, 2022

    Scale It – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

    When creating effective change in any organization, there are 40 rules that, in my experience, are the key between success […]
    December 5th, 2022

    Assets & Strengths Base – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

    For more than 30 years I have been involved in ‘change’ in organizations. Again and again, some fundamental principles, and often […]
    November 25th, 2022

    Campaign It… is 1 of my 40 rules of change

    When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change […]
    October 31st, 2022

    Hybrid or not hybrid? That’s not the question…

    Culture is the new workplace If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of […]
    October 24th, 2022

    ‘Powered by Viral Change™’: A Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

    When we started to work on Viral Change™, as a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change, and […]
    October 14th, 2022

    Corporate tribes, intellectual ghettos and open window policies

    We talk a lot about silos in organizations usually in the context of Business Units or divisions. But these are not […]
    October 7th, 2022

    Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

    Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is […]