List
Building Remarkable Organizations
The Rolling Luggage Paradox
I owe this to Nassim Taleb (‘Fooled by Randomness’ (2007), ‘The Black Swan’ (2008), ‘Antifragile’ (2013). As a traveller of many years […]
There must be a better way (I have good news)
There must be a better way than having 200 consultants landing in my company and doing the stuff for me, […]
“There are two types of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data sets”
What type are you? How our mental models work is part of the Minimal Introspection, something we tend to overlook, […]
Innovation? Great, but I am not in charge of it!
Years ago I was talking to a client, a Senior VP in the company, about a project that had to […]
The fastest and best way to build a creative culture: all revealed now
The fastest and best way to build a creative culture is to have lots of creative people together. No kidding. […]
Happiness in the organization is an outcome not an input. Prescribing happiness is a behavioural nonsense.
Another important idea (first published in 2016) worth revisiting. Enjoy! You can’t inject happiness in the organization. You can’t put […]
If the business is the mission, culture is the strategy
First published in November 2018 If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for more […]
‘Let our destination be decided by the winds of our discussion’
Socrates said. Or Plato said Socrates said. Socrates never wrote a word. He did not trust them. They were the […]
Culture is what happens when compliance leaves the room
The unwritten rules of the organization tell you more about its culture than all powerpoionts of its leadership programmes. The […]
15 random organizational irritations and inconvenient truths
Bottom-up is not more (of the same) workshops but at the bottom of the organization. Changing the geography of top-down […]
Confronted with dysfunctionality, a reorganization solution must be the last resource, not the first.
Most of our organizational problems are behavioural Structural answers hardly solve behavioural problems. Amalgamating A and B because A and […]
Culture is in the A list, the one where ‘work’ sits. Not in the B list (‘when I have time, after A’)
Culture is not a project, something to do on top of normal work, an extra, something to get your hands […]
The collaboration of rivals is always the strongest. Try it!
The author Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a most interesting book about the Lincoln presidency: ‘Team of Rivals’. It says it […]
If the business is the mission, culture is the strategy
If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for more or less universal truths, this […]
There is really only one measure of the attractiveness of the organization you lead
If you love KPIs, here is one. The attractiveness of your (corporate) function is defined by the number of people […]
Change? Give us a break, we have just had organization plastic surgery
In the previous Daily Thoughts I suggested: Readiness is a red herring and usually an alibi for not starting something […]
Too busy getting ready, no time to go.
A client, senior manager, mentioned to me recently that his company spent a disproportionate amount of time ‘getting ready’. He […]
Team, the noun, the structure, or teaming up, the verb, the behaviour?
Teamocracy may be the worst form of people collaboration except for all those other forms that have been tried from […]
How many people on your payroll have never licked a stamp?
Beloit College, in Wisconsin, creates every year a ‘Mindset List’ It shows a list of facts about a particular new […]
Storytelling wins wars whilst everything else is fighting battles (and 3 of 3): event shocks coming to you, that may not feel like gifts.
In October 2013, a ship carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. 300 people drowned. As The Guardian journalist Kenan […]
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