List
Corporate pathologies
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 […]
‘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 […]
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 […]
To Scale or not to scale? This is the Shakespearean culture question.
Behavioural /cultural shaping in organizations does not scale up by simply the leaders having the right mindset and motivation. A […]
Habits have no meaning, they create it. Start with behaviours, get meaning
In my organizational consulting work, and in behavioural terms, I am very used to be told, and challenged, that there […]
I can prove anything in management thinking. Watch me!
I can’t remember where I saw this. This is part of the point. It could have been anywhere. But I […]
‘The Dunbar Number’ and ‘Mad Lean Numbers’: a question of the right critical mass of people to make things happen.
Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and psychologist, Oxford professor, has formulated that 150 was the “cognitive limit to the number of […]
“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, […]
You want A, but you are systematically reinforcing B.
A simple exercise that leaders can do, either on their own with paper and pen, or with their management team, […]
Managing by thermostat (I want a culture of feed forward, not feed-back)
The Good Mechanics of Continuous Improvement have given us a culture of feed-back. Feed back is worshiped. There is a […]
Companies with ‘autoimmune disease’ : difficult treatment and poor prognosis
Sorry for the medicalization, an annoying legacy in my brain from many years of diagnosing and prescribing. Unlike many other […]
Stable culture is cultural sedimentation. It is like having a calcified boiler
I don’t know anything about boilers. Only that they are prone to take sabbaticals and stop delivering. In many cases […]
Reflection is subversive. Uprise! Slow down!
Space to reflect? Where is that? Are you saying we are not reflective? Don’t we have an intelligence? Are you […]
‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’
Attention Chief Transformation Officers, Offices of Transformation, Change Management Units, and Change Offices, and Projects of Future A,B,C,. Units of […]
Catastrophic success (may even have a celebration party)
I was used to the concept of catastrophic failure, but not catastrophic success, until I read an article in the […]
Leaders and Change: 12 Rules. (1) Stop admiring the problem
Some organizations seem to have a love affair with problems. They love their disruptive and furtive nature. Secret encounters in […]
You want A, but you are systematically reinforcing B.
A simple exercise that leaders can do, either on their own with paper and pen, or with their management team, […]
Most conspiracies of silence and coverups in our organizations are not even consciously orchestrated
And those which are maybe less dangerous than those who aren’t. In an old 2005 study, which findings are very […]
The alternative Post-mortem of failed change programmes. (and 5 of 5): we communicate too much.
In this miniseries I have shared so far four inconvenient truths uncovered by the forensics of ‘change management’ failure: Too […]
The alternative Post-mortem of failed change programmes. (4 of 5): Too much vision, not lack of it
Forth in the mini series: uncovering of truths of the failure of change and transformation programmes, via a reverse engineering. […]
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