List

Corporate pathologies

  • Obituary: Incrementalism

    Please pray for the soul of incrementalism that, after a long and slow incremental illness, left us for good. After […]

  • A vast epidemic in organizations that seems to grow and grow

    I must say I am getting very frustrated to see more and more companies which  workforce seems to function as […]

  • The organization (re)volution will be postponed. Once more.

    The below is the equivalent of how in some organizations the so called ‘management of change’  or cultural transformation are […]

  • Tripadvisorisation of life

    Really? Recently I went to visit a specialist doctor in a private facility. Of course I was handed out a […]

  • Accountability holes? Desert spaces? Orphan ideas? Buy the tent, occupy the street.

    Any organization has accountability holes, areas where nobody really owns the space. Sometimes these are true ‘grey areas’, sometimes are […]

  • The health-care-delivery Onion System does not need Big Consulting but small common sense. Maybe that’s the problem, it’s so uncommon.

    My experience of several health care delivery systems, both as a patient and as external consultant, is that they function […]

  • The minority tyranny in the organization

    Nassim Taleb’s piece in Medium about ten months ago entitled The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority is […]

  • Bullshit re-gaining academic recognition. Now, not a simple outburst but a formal topic of intellectual interest.

    English not being my mother tongue, I always take the liberty of using terms that polite English people don’t use […]

  • The glass-always-half-empty people never bother to fill it in

    Entire organizations are kept alive and kicking by the glass-half-full-people whilst the glass-half-empty-people spend their time feeling sorry for themselves. […]

  • Tribes in the organization: Managing by Segmenting Around (part 3 of 3)

    If you followed the two previous Daily Thoughts, you would have got into the idea of ‘Managing by Segmenting Around’. […]

  • I have to be honest: look how many things around are wrong. But let’s be positive.

    My son, I’ll be honest with you. You can become a successful person or an alcoholic. I have to be […]

  • The enemy is most likely to be within

    Looking outside is great. Looking inside is not a good idea. It leads to navel gazing. Nombrilisme in French, more […]

  • The Negative Inventory Manager is a toxic manager, an organizational health hazard.

    There is a type of manager/leader who masters the art of listing what you don’t have.  We don’t have the […]

  • The most dangerous character in the organization’s plot: The Self Proclaimed Saviour.

    The Self Proclaimed Saviours will never save you since their only intent is their personal success. It happens in society […]

  • An enlightened top leadership is sometimes a fantastic alibi for a non-enlightened management to do whatever they want

    Nothing is more rewarding than having a CEO who says world-changing things in the news, and who produces bold, enlightened […]

  • Organizations: The Enemy Within (2/3). What the real enemies look like.

    How to look for the enemy? It is there. It is in the form of divisional silos that don’t talk […]

  • We must resist the tripadvisorization of human relationships in the organization.

    Random, semi-connected, unfinished thoughts on this: A so called ‘culture of feedback’ is conceptually overrated. It has become one of […]

  • Five fast tracks to hopelessness in the organization. Little cure afterwards.

    Prevention is the only serious approach. The extra problem is that all these five tracks may be partially invisible, used […]

  • Archaeologists usually don’t build houses. We have lots of archaeologists on the payroll

    Over years of consulting, I have realised that the best leaders I know, never talk about their previous companies, what […]

  • Quick self-test on guts to call out non-compliance.

    I’d like you to do this quick exercise: Part 1. Read this edited version of a summary in a 2008 […]

    • To search my website, please use the form below.

      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 […]