List

Change, Leadership and Society

  • Steal ideas, implant with caution, observe, tweak, observe again, never close your eyes.

    Innovation and renewal requires your windows open to the world. Plenty of organizations out there are experimenting with models, far […]

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

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

  • When the organization goes into permanent rehearsal mode, learns to rehearse, not to perform.

    We spend more time on preparing for doing than in doing. That would be good if we were just talking […]

  • HR competence systems need two things: a diet, and a dose of honesty

    Medium and big organizations tend to use a competence system that segments people by grades and by degree of competence. […]

  • I am in favour of consultants entering the temple of the Social Sciences provided they take off their shoes

    I am paraphrasing British philosopher Simon Blackburn who said the same about scientists entering the temple of philosophy. There is […]

  • The corrosion of logic: from ‘why-what-how’, to ‘how, what, maybe why’.

    There was a time when the logic of things started with a ‘why’, followed with a ‘what’ and ended in […]

  • The great ‘How to’ takeover

    There is a period in child development when children start asking the question ’why?’. They usually seem unsatisfied with one […]

  • What is the point? Probably the best answer is when ‘there isn’t any’.

    Back in June 2016, people could walk over floating piers on Lake Iseo (Italy), all covered with yellow material, one […]

  • Dear Business Development candidate: tell me about the things you have developed in life

    If you have a behaviour/value system and you want to recruit people in a way that this value system is […]

  • The battle for the 3Ss : Synthesis, Sense, and Simplicity

    Let me share with you my 3Ss, where I suggest you put your money: 1. Synthesis. My followers, readers, clients, […]

  • To stop doing some things is a great source of added value. Try it!

    One of the very frequent questions that I ask my clients is what they can stop doing so that they […]

  • Business discovers the ‘social movement’ language. I hope we don’t corporatize it.

    A social movement is not a bunch of people, even hundreds, or thousands, moving socially. A social movement needs a […]

  • 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 […]

  • The ‘Abandon Hope’ organization

    Some organizations are little versions of Dante’s Inferno with its sign ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’ at the […]

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

    Consistently over the years, the Edelman’s Trust Barometer has told us that the greatest source of trust inside the organization […]

  • Compatible dreams + the non-negotiable = the journey (AKA the company)

    In a massive street demonstration for Anti Something Big, you have the Anti Something Big activists, the Anti Everything, the […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 of the highest ranks of the HR function […]

  • 3 Inconvenient truths about leadership and change

    (1) If the top leadership of the company doesn’t exhibit the values/behaviours that you want to instill in the culture, […]

  • 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 […]

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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 […]