List
Change, Leadership and Society
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 […]
Saturday poem for leaders who don’t read poems
There is an ‘Accidental Literature for Leaders’. I call this my compilation of poems or pieces of narrative that are […]
10 Rules of Self-Survival: The Border Diet
Try my Border Diet: A diet to protect yourself against persistent Full Disclosure that the digital world forces upon you. […]
No milk, no honey, enjoy the journey
Moses’ leadership was bad. He promised his people a land of milk and honey. Instead, they got a terrible hike […]
His greatest success was not to fail
Many people, many of them in high managerial positions, succeed by avoiding failure. They become unmemorable by design. A new […]
Preserving the problem when dedicated to finding the solution.
It’s called the Shirky principle, after Clay Shirky, prolific American author of bestsellers such as ‘Here comes everybody’(2008) and ‘Cognitive […]
Two wrong Talent Wars
The war on talent. McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what seemed […]
We are all traders of comfort, no matter the degree of uncertainty in our worlds
A specialist nephrologist I know well says to me: I get very nervous with all this heart stuff, I don’t […]
The only common feature that successful companies share, is that they are not failing.
Management Theory (if there is one) and management practice are not physics. We don’t have very solid data about what […]
For every problem, the Victorians had a building
A few years ago, the BBC broadcast a series called ‘How we built Britain’, presented by the veteran David Dimbleby. […]
Beware of the assumed magic properties of the word ‘Prioritize!’
‘Prioritize’ is a word that I particularly dislike because it is overused and misused in a terrible way. I have […]
My Russian Dolls theory of the organization
No system can be fully understood within the system. No, this is not an esoteric statement but a simple, common […]
The broken windows of the organization
A neighbourhood with broken windows and graffiti on the walls says: look how easy it is to break a window […]
I want to import this ‘act of kindness’ into business life
I know of a brilliant medical doctor who, in front of a worried patient, perhaps with some imaginary worries, perhaps […]
‘A man can put up with almost any how if he has a why’
That was Nietzsche on change management! It goes to the core of the issue of how we all try to […]
No revolutions here, we are corporate. Is corporate life shielded in the Era of the Unpredictable?
Here we go. I’m sounding a little gloomy for a Monday morning. I don’t mean to. Promise. Back in 2016 […]
Don’t go to Abilene. Nobody wants to.
Jerry B Harvey’s 1974 article “The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement’, contains this vignette. On a hot afternoon visiting […]
Corporate culture? Start with subcultures, find the tribes, and look for the unwritten rules of their dynamics.
With some exceptions, there is no such a thing as single, global, monolithic corporate culture. There is usually a confederation […]
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Killers (in the organization)
1. Postpone. Some great killers postpone everything. They don’t even have to use the language, they simply organise things in […]
For leadership, look around, not in research papers
Leadership has traditional sources of learning, reflection, role modelling and a ‘body of knowledge’. There are four that dominate. This […]
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