We have been exploring briefly in the last days the Steering system of the company under the formula: (1) Space […]

The trouble with value systems is that, very often, they have no proper translation into pragmatic and visible expectations that […]

Yesterday’s Daily Thought introduced the formula: (1) Space in the World (Purpose) + (2) Core Beliefs + (3) Non negotiable Behaviours […]

Many companies operate under some sort of ‘Mission and Vision’ framework, often also accompanied, or preceded, by a statement of […]

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

The phrase is from John Lennon who stole it from TS Elliott ‘amateur poets borrow; mature poets steal’. There are […]

In some organizations, daily life and the day to day meetings feel like a Permanent Focus Group. People spend their […]

To continue on the theme of Purpose…after yesterday’s: Purpose is always in the basement   Suddenly purpose is back. We […]

One’s true purpose is never finally decided. Like history, purpose is always found backwards and then edited. A little journey […]

If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for more or less universal truths, this […]

Paraphrasing (better, stealing from) American anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) a corporate culture, or, I would say, a subculture that you […]

The description of some company cultures by their leaders may sound like a work of fiction by people inside. I […]

I have on several occasions presented my views on Employer Branding. The trouble with this area, is that it overlaps […]

Every morning in my neighbourhood there is a small window of time when traffic becomes chaotic, slow, painful and frustrating. […]

If I had a say in new roles for large organizations, I think I would establish this new Division: VP […]

The cost of authenticity, of being yourself, is zero. In theory, the cost of pretending you are somebody else is […]

We all know, and have, some heroes in our organizations. People who jump in, solve problems, make themselves available, walk […]

Culture is not a project, something to do on top of normal work, an extra, something to get your hands […]

Facts: abysmal sales in the supermarket chain, strong competitor activity, decreased customer loyalty. Guess what, new CEO. Analysis: old fashion […]

There are hundreds of pieces of evidence including serious research that show that human beings (and animals for that matter) […]

The late Stanislav Andreski (1919-2007) British Professor of Social Sciences, in one of his vintage passages in ‘Social Sciences as […]

Get yourself a copy of the Edelman Trust Barometer. The Edelman company produces an excellent annual report on trust (organizations, […]

Lessons from the Pre-CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual (declassified, in case you wonder). This is how it goes: General Interference with […]

Managing uncertainty is something our brain loves to do. And it loves even more  to be helped. At macro-macro-level, Theories-Of-Everything […]

1: The ‘annual’ measurement is artificial. It works for budgets and accountants but not for much more. If a project […]

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

The Robust Culture: the culture handles well internal faults and external stress. There may be internal gaps (skills, unfilled positions, […]

This is my rephrasing of ‘The army is now fully prepared for the previous war’, inspired by John Gall, in his […]

This piece of conventional wisdom is almost never true. That ‘they were ready’ is very often a posterity rationalization. Most […]

I often use lines from some of Obama’s speeches, to ask leaders about their sense of destiny, small d or […]

For every community struggling to achieve something, and deciding to launch some form of collective action; for every minority that […]

Whether you are sitting in HR, Organizational Development or any other corporate function, or simply in a position of management […]

Following on from Wednesday’s proposition, the new disciplines of management, ‘The New Classics’ are these 10: 1. Behavioural Economics 2. […]

Amongst the challenges that management has in the 21st Century, which are shared, of course, by specific functions such as […]

This quote is from Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988), American science fiction writer, who was famous for his quotes. This one […]

A true story. A health care worker is truly struggling to do her work and caring for a son who […]

Attention re-structuralists, strategists and people about to be sold a multi-million pound reorganization solution that will solve all those nasty […]

In the previous Daily Thoughts posting, I said that successful growth contains the seeds of its failure. Managing the organizational complexity […]

If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of work, the post-pandemic work, the […]

In our Viral Change™ Programmes, members of the community (company) of activists, invariably ask questions such as, what shall we […]

Scenario 1: The Leadership Team/Top Management Team is in high control mode. They feel they need to make many different […]

Every morning, when we wake up, put our work clothes on and head for whatever is in our Outlook or […]

Apparently nothing can change unless there is as ‘burning platform’. Business and old change management loves that kind of drama. […]

The answer to individual negativity is group positiveness.  Fighting individual negativity at individual level is a risky fight. If you […]

And still I get lots of people who raise eyebrows, people who look at me with a conspiracy-like smile (‘you […]

Possibility is perhaps the most beautiful word in management. There are organizations in which possibilities seem exhausted, work is an […]

Sorry for the medicalisation, an annoying legacy in my brain from many years of diagnosing and prescribing. Unlike many other […]

The ‘expectations muddle’ of empowerment has different shapes and flavours: I expect you to do something but you don’t think […]

Continuing my revised 12 laws of social change at a scale. Very simple laws apply to any large scale change including the […]

My revised 12 rules of social change at a scale.  These very simple laws apply to any large scale change […]

I like the concept of reinvention, renewal, or transformation. But I like most the concept of rebooting! Organizations, teams, groups, […]

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

A  client, senior manager, mentioned to me recently that his company spent a disproportionate amount of time ‘getting ready’. He […]

Sustainability of change, of cultural initiatives, of well intentioned corporate improvements is the key challenge. We are all quite energetic […]

In this model, the employee (1) is an activist, (2) largely working peer-to-peer, and (3) progressing towards (if not arriving […]

Here is a ‘very novel’ concept. Employee Engagement is needed because… it’s good in and of itself. Because work enhances […]

This is model 4 of the series.  The concept is simple. Imagine that you, as an employee, are in reality an […]

This is model 3 (but the 4th post, confusing!)  ‘The Cause’. Employees join forces to work on a Cause: green agenda, corporate […]

This is model 2 in the pack of 6 that I have described. There is a book, or two, and its […]

Model 1 of my 6 is what I call, ‘Air time’. It translates into: ‘we recognise that employees’ views are not properly […]

‘For every problem, the Victorians have a building’. For every idea that we need to carry forward, we invent an […]

A few years ago, the BBC broadcast a series called ‘How we built Britain’, presented by the veteran David Dimbleby. […]

In WWII there was a curious episode of an injection of critical thinking, not entirely well publicised. Big bomber airplanes […]

The difference between the critical thinker and the un-critical one is not a difference in IQ, or mental strength, or […]

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, a 19th century Swiss mathematician is remembered by many things in his scientific turf, but by one […]

The process of creativity can be very messy. In fact, it is perhaps necessarily messy. Like the artist’s workshop. The […]

Company: Where companions are. Companion = com + panis in Latin, that is with bread, sharing bread of food. ‘Travelling […]

In my consulting work, it is incredibly frequent to see people stuck with a question: ‘but what do they want us […]

A friend of mine Carlos Orozco  uses this analogy. If you are driving a car and you have a puncture, you’ll try […]

When trying to understand a culture, there will be plenty of visible things to look at, to hear and to […]

Some cultures a very introspective. In a healthy way. Some are pathologically introspective and spend a lot of time dissecting […]

I don’t like to sound gloomy, but, is the current self-centrism an epidemic of colossal proportions? Or, another way to […]

I have described before the role of managers in many ways, often pointing to the risk of becoming ‘information traffic […]

We are pulled to conform to the group, to participate, to contribute, to say something. Nodding is not enough. Taking […]

I am (in) IT, I work for X (company) I work for X (company), I am in IT These are […]

I trust you because I can say ‘I haven’t got a clue’ and you don’t think I am an idiot […]

This is plagiarism, of course. I am stealing 13th Century Saint, Francis of Assisi’s  line: ‘Preach the Gospel all the […]

Let’s start somewhere else. What is the logic behind Listmania? Very often there isn’t one. But starting a note/blog/communication with […]

There is no such thing as kindness. Unless, and until, somebody does something to another human being who can feel […]

I read a while ago this story. Within the highly structured and hierarchical (by design) Catholic church, a Religious Order […]

In my world, ‘corporate’ is synonymous with big structure, big processes and big systems. Of course, it is not its […]

Nassim Taleb’s piece in Medium some time ago entitled The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority is one […]

Accustomed as we are to creating plans to succeed on something, this may sound counterintuitive. Creating (serious) plans for failure […]

Pope Francis, spiritual leader to 1.2 billion people, likes ‘to call a cat a cat’. He has gained a world […]

I said in yesterday’s Daily Thought that we needed to grab the (management) Paradox of Control. The more we lose […]

The more ‘command-and-control’ you practice, the less control you actually have and the more you’ll need to command. In today’s […]

THIS THURSDAY – don’t miss our final live webinar in the ‘A Better Way’ series, when Mark Storm and I […]

Imagine this goal. Let’s shift from 30 people making a decision in 30 days, to 3 people making the same […]

It is perhaps the Age of Inversion. The weights have gone the other way. Globalisation, big G, or small g, […]

These are commonly found uses of the expression ‘they’ within organizations. They won’t approve this They don’t get it They […]

People in organizations spend a lot of time representing somebody else or something else. It feels sometimes that the company […]

Strong thinking and strong ideas are great. We need people to defend them, champion them and feel passionate about them. […]

The trouble with the talking about leadership is that we have made a big basket of it and thrown in […]

Let me share a piece of our own research that has just come up from the oven. In a 1200 […]

Large scale mobilization and alignment of people, united through common goals yet everybody is in different and diverse roles with […]

John Kotter, Harvard Emeritus Professor and prolific author, has made a significant contribution to Leadership and Change for many years. […]

How do you make values live? Install them in a culture? Model 1: You preach them and preach them, and […]

Since we all love conceptual frames, it is not surprising that in the area of ‘change management’ there are a […]

Since employee engagement has become an industry in its own right, and is taking over a lot of air time, […]

Most of our organizational problems are behavioural. Structural answers hardly solve behavioural problems. Amalgamating A and B because A and […]

Stanislav Andreski ( 1919-2007) in his little big book Social Science as Sorcery, writing about the influence of the social […]

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

New organizations and old ones in the business of transforming themselves, would be better off learning by heart these two […]

If you had the possibility of designing an ideal organizational structure or redesigning one that you already have, what would […]

There is a difference between listening and just waiting to speak. You can spot people doing either. Some people don’t […]

Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. A people don’t talk to B people; if […]

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

I broke my antisocial tradition during taxi rides and started a conversation with my Panama driver. I asked him who […]

The fastest and best way to build a creative culture is to have lots of creative people together. No kidding. […]

We were all born as questions. The old saying that ‘children enter school as question marks and leave as full […]

Behavioural/cultural shaping in organizations does not scale up by the leaders simply having the right mindset and motivation. A mechanism […]

Where is home? Ask this question to an Irishman or Irish woman. Even if they have been living abroad for […]

Over the years, I have had lots of conversations about ‘corporate culture’ and in particular  ‘what to measure’. I must […]

This is the request we make at the beginning of a Viral Change™ programme. Forget your function and your hierarchical […]

My friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]

In my work as Organization Architect, I have dealt with clients of many sizes, shapes and colours over the years. […]

In organizational life we are used to the dichotomy ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom up’, for example, when we talk about change. […]

Organizations have traditionally used a three-legged approach to creating a ‘culture’: Communications, training and compliance. None of those in isolation […]

It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that, if we just put individuals […]

I have been researching for a while the not-that-easy topic of ‘cognitive mental frames’ or ‘mental models’ that take over […]

Serious behavioural change? Start with micro-behaviours, then walk backwards to values, never the other way around. And bring peer-to-peer or […]

Can we work on the collective and reward the individualistic? Well, sure you can, it happens every day. But it’s […]

If I were the one in charge of deciding the ‘person of the year’ for the front cover of Time […]

I said previously that large scale mobilization of people (AKA social movements, AKA company culture) needs a platform. They don’t […]

When I was young, very young, many moons ago, I remember my school mates and the priests having discussions such […]

I wish I could remember where I read these stats.  Russia under the Tsar 1914-1917…had 180 million peasants and workers […]

It is said that in any organization, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I often think that […]

It’s a new world out there. You’ll realise this truth if you open the windows of your organization and let […]

I must have heard this for the first time from Tom Peters many years ago. He was, and he is, […]

If you want to execute a strategy, you want to keep cool and move inexorably forward, and if you think […]

Control the conversation. Control the dialogue. Don’t accept a dialogue imposed on you. Common ground is OK, but only if […]

My best friends are monks of the type that don’t talk much. So we don’t talk much. I visit them […]

Daily Thought featured in: Camino – Leadership Notes on the Road Don’t look at us, at the leadership at the […]

Warning: This statement will be dismissed. But, before you do that, I’d ask you to consider the differences between ‘organizational […]

A less spoken feature of great leadership is the art of managing the disappointments created by that same leadership. I […]

Try my Border Diet: A diet to protect yourself against persistent Full Disclosure that the digital world forces upon you. […]

Space to reflect? Where is that? Are you saying we are not reflective? Don’t we have intelligence? Are you suggesting […]

These three organizational ‘magic words’ manage to get mixed up a lot. It’s hard to believe because they are so […]

Did we ever, ever have more facts around us? Certainly not. We talk about Big Data. It is of course […]

The monastic tradition in the Christian world has these 3 magic S that have been present since the Fathers of […]

In caricature, this is a 3-point strategy to develop further. It’s a simple mental and practical frame. Build an overwhelming, […]

There are two ways to carry a baby – in ancient Hinduism tradition – the way of the cat and […]

TODAY’s the day – join me, for my Book Launch Webinar at 17:30 (UK time). Register Now. I’ll be discussing […]

Don’t miss my book launch webinar TOMORROW. Book your seat! I’ll be discussing themes from my new book Camino – […]

Delighted to announce…Camino – Leadership Notes on the Road launches TODAY! You can order your copy or register for my […]

Join my live webinar THIS WEEK. Book your seat! I’ll be discussing leadership as a praxis…’no one is ever a leader, […]

6 days to go until my live webinar. Book your seat! I’ll be discussing leadership as a praxis…’no one is […]

ONLY ONE WEEK to go before my live webinar. Book your seat! I’ll be discussing leadership as a praxis…’no one […]

Join my webinar next week! To mark the launch of my new book: Camino – Leadership Notes on the Road. […]

Don’t miss my Book Launch webinar on 25th March Join me as I discuss Camino – Leadership Notes on the Road […]

Register for my Book Launch webinar on 25th March? Join me as I discuss Camino – Leadership Notes on the […]

Have you registered for my webinar on 25th March? Join me as I discuss my new book – Camino – Leadership […]

My virtual book launch event is on 25th March. Register here. Join me as I discuss my new book – Camino […]

My virtual book launch event is on 25th March. Register here. Join me as I discuss my new book – […]

MY NEW BOOK – CAMINO: LEADERSHIP NOTES ON THE ROAD, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER   A Daily Thought featured in Camino: […]

CAMINO – LEADERSHIP NOTES ON THE ROAD NOW AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER An extensive collection of my Daily Thoughts on leadership. […]

Pope Francis has introduced disruption. The head of the 1.2 billion Catholic Church lives in a one bedroom apart-hotel, produces […]

Taken from my new book Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. ‘Nobody is ever a leader. Becoming one is […]

Daily Thought taken from my new book Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Read preview extracts: Camino – Extract […]

Good leaders are a bit like corporate anthropologists. In fact, we are all exotics on the payroll. In my idiosyncratic […]

Taken from my forthcoming book: Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Read Extract Chapter 1 Part 2.    Some organizations or […]

Taken from my forthcoming book: Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Read NEW extract Chapter 1 part 2   Imagine that […]

Talking about leadership teams at the top, I often hear ‘they launch these words but they don’t give specifics’, or […]

Taken from my forthcoming book: Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Read NEW extract Chapter 1 part 2   […]

Leadership can be taught, of course, but not in the same way as teaching how to drive a car or […]

Taken from my forthcoming book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road.   Download an extract of Chapter 1 here: Extract Camino […]

‘A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.’—Fred Ross Fred Ross (1910-1992) American community […]

We call it character assassination for a reason. It’s the ultimate attack. The attack to the uniqueness of an individual, […]

Hillel the Elder, or ‘Rabbi’ Hillel, a Jewish leader who died in 10 CE, is remembered outside the Jewish tradition […]

The purpose of the organization is… The objectives of the strategy are… The reason why we have restructured is… From […]

Taken from my soon to be released book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road.    This is a great story […]

Taken from my soon to be released book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road  ‘This isn’t a period, it’s a […]

Taken from my soon to be released book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road    ‘A man was leading a […]

Taken from my soon to be released book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road    Invited to present at TEDx […]

Happy Christmas and New Year to everybody in the Daily Thoughts community. We have all had the most challenging year […]

Four years ago, starting in the Midwest of Ireland and replicating to other parts of the country, a bottom up […]

Today, we are in front of daily wars of narratives: political, social, models of the world, futures, concept of Man. […]

In a large company, what do a leadership development, a culture change and a business integration programme typically have in […]

In this mini series I have shared so far four inconvenient truths uncovered by the forensics of ‘change management’ failure: […]

Fourth in the mini series:  uncovering of truths of the failure of change and transformation programmes via a reverse engineering. […]

Third instalment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Finding: […]

Second instalment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Many […]

This five part mini-series (!) is not glamorous. It tries to uncover some inconvenient truths via a reverse engineering of […]

‘Co-benefit’ is a term broadly used in the Climate Change movement to explain the unintended/extended consequences of actions beyond an […]

In my Daily Thought back in September, I suggested that leadership competence-based systems may be better at providing a language […]

A few years ago, I was in the lobby of a global pharma company waiting for my appointment. I sat […]

Small, sometimes entrepreneurial companies (small and entrepreneurial are not the same) enjoy ways of working that are fit for their […]

My very good client BTG plc created a habit of getting leadership teams together to race boats for a day, […]

We have a problem in Division A. Leaders are not doing their job. Leaders are not living the values. Some […]

Madeleine Albright, politician and diplomat; former and first female U.S. Secretary of State, said in her Commencement Speech at Scripps […]

In the short term, the health of all of us depends largely on people following public health rules (masks, distance, […]

A slow growth cancer in organizations. People unnecessarily and gratuitously condemning the company to an impossible future: we will never […]

We are social animals. We live in spaces, with rules, with rituals, in tribal environments. We are both architects of […]

Let me elevate the question of ‘differentiation’ to a higher level. Product differentiation? Sure. How different is different? That is […]

Somewhere along the line, in the history of ‘business’, something went wrong and people took the wrong turn at the […]

Our managerial training and praxis has been quite successful at making us guilty of not focusing enough on a task […]

Despite being repeated a thousand times, hiring processes are still quite imperfect. Of course, there are many places in which […]

‘Continuous improvement’ is part of the management furniture and something that, at face value, one could not disagree with. But […]

Complacency is always a risk, more so when we profess to be immune to it. Sometimes, achieving organizational and business […]

Continuing the conversation on leadership. Yes, we could go forever. Let me make an assumption: that miraculously you’ll have some […]

The modern organization is fluid. People are not necessarily assigned to one place, one team, even one single role. The […]

Collaboration is behavioural, not a process or system. As a behaviour, it can’t be taught. It’s something that some people […]

For CEOs, CFOs, CHROs, and other Cs, and Divisional Ds’, survey after survey try to identify their focus, their concerns, […]

Leadership is a term that describes a relationship. No relationship, no leadership. Leadership can only be defined in terms of […]

Corporate speak is of course tribal. So, to belong, you have to speak the tribal idiom. Through my work, I […]

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

Corporate storytelling has been largely dominated by heroic stories, referring to extraordinary circumstances, handled by extraordinary people. They make for […]

‘Walk the talk’ is being consistent: say something and then do what you said you would. ‘Talk the walk’ is […]

Any label that could be equally applied to Mother Theresa, Hitler, your CEO, Kim Jong-un, Mandela, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and […]

The British retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) has ‘Plan A’ as the title of their vast corporate and social responsibility […]

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

Exercise: take a piece of paper and put names next to each category. Use your organization or an organization you […]

These 8, self-explanatory categories of people are the natural focus of traditional HR and management systems . They are needed […]

Societal issues, clash of ideologies, fundamentalism, political engagement (or lack of it), organizational innovation, Leadership 2020, no matter what direction […]

I have seen the same slide yet again. It keeps following me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. OK, not on […]

Reinventing management to deal with the complexities of the world and, therefore, the complexities of business challenges is something that, […]

Many cultural change efforts fail out of a mathematical mistake. They focus on ‘people in the room’ (conference, off site, […]

Many years ago companies started to say ‘we are organized into project teams’. Professional projectisation was the thing. Until it […]

Give me a sequence, some boxes, a template on steps, lots of arrows and a PowerPoint, and I will create […]

Avoid off-the-shelf leadership programmes. Pret-a-porter leadership development is attractive but unlikely to be a good solution. There are no universal […]

As Woody Allen said, showing up is 80% of  life. The bookshelves, digital or otherwise, are full of ‘How-To-Succeed-In’ stuff. […]

What would be wrong with buying gazelles in the first place? The answer I hear sometimes is, ‘Well, the market […]

The following line will short cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, start-up get-to-know, redeployment of […]

I shared yesterday three types of employees I want for the modern organization. Different characters on the payroll. If there […]

My ideal modern organization has different characters on the payroll. If there is a payroll. These are three of them: […]

I review my 20 rules of Leadership every few months. I have published this list regularly in my Daily Thoughts. […]

Philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) requested before his death that the collection of his writings be called ‘paths, not works’. He […]

The secret of success revealed: it’s hard work! There you are. Now mix it with healthy ambition. And now make […]

The job description is dead. It is replaced by a Lego box, no instruction manual or a map. Welcome to […]

My third framing comment, after (1) framing new behaviours, and (2) the framing of the overall narrative of the organization, […]

Back in June, I said that I would put framing at the top of the list on ‘leadership tasks’. I […]

Some time ago a picture of a pack of wolves walking in the snow had been circulating on many social […]

In any organization there are positive deviants (deviants from expected norms, who achieve results) and other ‘statistical abnormalities’ by nature […]

My local DIY/Bricolage/Hardware store has terrible service. But now, by adopting a tradition started by Walmart (a tradition which is […]

There was a time, not long ago, when people got fed up with ‘change programmes’ that faded at the speed […]

Four types: The generosity of the traffic light. Every fixed interval, it lets you get through. It even changes colour […]

There are many compilations but I found these examples in distractify.com. These are cases of rejection that should make us […]

Business organizations have grown in a traditional alpha male model where emotions are weaknesses, irrationality is banned and ‘the human […]

We need to improve communication is not the same as, this is what we need to do to improve communication, […]

There are three major sources of trust generation. Everything else is commentary: The ‘keep promises’. I can rely on you, […]

The following are not the same: What you want to measure What you need to measure What you have been […]

If somebody could care to quantify the cost of constantly checking with people whether they are doing what they are […]

I owe this phrase to John Kerry whom I had the privilege of seeing on his London tour promoting his […]

There are many ways to introduce, trigger and spread behaviours in organizations, but not many of them are effective and […]

Organizations grow in many ways: organically and quietly, organically and exponentially, by acquisitions or mergers etc. In every step of […]

There are about 200 people in the organization. But 10 of them at the top are very powerful In fact, […]

I previously wrote about company cultures having a glue, The One Global Culture does not exist. But pretending that it […]

The so-called One Global Culture is a confederation of: (a) Geographical cultures and sub-cultures (Italy, USA, France etc) (b) Functional, […]

Ryan Holiday (media critic, stoicism vendor, marketing strategist) is ‘the bestselling author of Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a […]

The writer Nicholas Carr said about the influence of the Internet on the way he wrote and, in general, on his […]

Random thoughts: People content with average achievements in the market, launch a party when the statistics show a few points […]

Louis Gerstner, chairman of IBM from 1993 until 2002, recalls in his autobiography, the company’s use of a competence model […]

Memo to all functions and Business Partners (HR, OD, L&D, Internal/Corporate Communications, Strategy Units, Finance, Health and Safety, Branding/PR, and […]

We can do much better than this. But we don’t. On the contrary, we exploit these platitudes and repeat them […]

There is a romantic view of the organization that sees it completely borderless, inside and outside. Inside, this view says, […]

A good friend, an expert in Communications, has created her new website with a prominent quote of mine, ‘Change Management […]

These are us, you and me. OK, apologies for calling you ordinary. But it’s not disrespectful. Believe me. It’s like […]

Stage 1: The Accidental Management team. The team is composed by whoever reports to the top. You are in that […]

It could be argued that ‘silos’ are part of the human condition and group interaction, and Chris Rodgers (Informal Coalitions) […]

‘People like me’ is a category in its own right in the Edelman Trust Barometer. Multiple sets of data point […]

There are many ways to list our own assets. And that’s something that is very healthy to do. Practice it […]

The Communications function in organizations has still today one of the best chances to drive strategic change. To do this, […]

If leadership is a praxis, something that ‘I’ do (name and surname here, please), then, knowing a little bit about […]

At some people’s request, I am revising an old Daily Thoughts on ‘solidarity’ in the work place. Solidarity is one […]

There are two opposite and wrong reactions to Employee (engagement/satisfaction) surveys. At one end, there is the ‘ignore the findings’. […]

Passion is an emotion, or set of emotions. You may want, indeed, that your people are passionate, but you can’t […]

‘Let’s be real and aware of the current budget realities’ is a warning that leaders should give to their people […]

What about the leader as a designer of spaces, a social architect that creates places (physical) and spaces? Not hard […]

The England and Wales education authority has publicised a list of behaviours that will not be allowed in the classroom […]

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is a Norwegian Anthropology professor that has achieved more than any of his fellow anthropologists: you only […]

Engagement, retention even activism…Traditional models of employee engagement are getting a bit tired. They are starting to look the same, […]

And the question is: ‘Why are you still here?’ You learn about the organization by asking questions to employees when […]

Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket one: Working conditions, Flexibility at work, Pay and perks, Reward and recognition, […]

A man is walking alongside the road with a bag of rice and throwing rice outside the road. Another man […]

Experiment. Not kidding. Once upon a time ‘experimenting’ was something that only scientists did. Most people would associate the word […]

The space of your Self is occupied. By you. This is good news and bad news. On one hand, you […]

1. They don’t read blogs entitled ‘5 things very successful leaders have in common’. 2. They don’t care about lists […]

Performance appraisal or performance management are one thing. Forced ranking into an artificial normal distribution of people in the organization, […]

This is my alternative to the Gallup 12. You can develop a whole Organizational Development philosophy around these questions. These […]

Only when you see Performance Management as rituals, you can understand why we still do them in the same unchanged […]

Structural answers to organizational problems are very unlikely to succeed. Division A people don’t collaborate with Division B people, so […]

Many organizations have a Risk Management function of some sort. Often scattered amongst different constituencies: manufacturing, engineering, R&D etc. It […]

OK, at least you’re reading. Thanks. The organization is a network. Networks have emergent properties. Translation: things come up from […]

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 […]

Clicktivism is a form of digital /online engagement that requires the extraordinary effort of one of your fingers, possibly the […]

A book by ex-Microsoft researcher and now MIT prof Kentaro Toyama (Geek Heresy, 20015) is not precisely novel on the topic of […]

An indepth analysis of the world of ‘Digital Transformation’ shows two things. One is that there is no such thing […]

Big L, small l, legacy is the long term outcome of leadership. There will be legacy. You’re better off shaping […]

Model 1. The technology, for example in the form of digital platforms such as Enterprise Social Networks, ESN (Yammer type) […]

If you want to learn from biographies of leaders, from their inspirations, about their traits, maybe tricks, read about Lincoln, […]

We all live and work in bureaucratic organizations. The differences between us is the dose. In today’s world, bureaucracy is […]

At a conference I attended, the very sharp mind of Marten Mickos, CEO of HackerOne, ex HP, ex Nokia, reminded […]

How do people change their mind? How can we influence people to change their minds? Well, any of us will […]

Following on from one of the topics discussed during yesterday’s thought-provoking webinar on The Myths of Management – leadership and […]

In our world of management, and in terms of understanding how we mobilize people at scale, we are always behind […]

Three bad news people: People who sell discontent. They become experts. You may have an entire internal sales force of […]

  I know it will happen. I’m certain. It’s nothing to do with trust.   Trust requires uncertainty. I trust […]

Mastering healthy tension between them, or surrendering to an ‘impossible alignment’ is a choice for leaders and managers. The worse […]

There is something only you can live: your life. Socrates said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. Being […]

I was told, many years ago, by somebody very close to the old Microsoft management, in Bill Gates times, that […]

The Good Mechanics of Continuous Improvement have given us a culture of feedback. Feedback is worshipped. There is a whole […]

Imagine this situation, which I am sure you have never come across. Just kidding. A ‘project’ (not necessarily defined as […]

If you were to list your most important people assets, above the best set of skills and competences, above the […]

A CEO asked me recently: what do you do with a manager who does not embrace or support change, in […]

Extracts taken from my book The Flipping Point. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs to […]

I’ve written several times about the tired distinction between management and leadership. It had its logic and purpose, and made […]

The great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote about the early 20th Century Spanish society as being ‘led by people who […]

Continuous culture shaping within an organization equals social movement: large scale behavioural and cultural change, for a purpose, powered by […]

Some organizations that are very good at (external) marketing, are terrible at internal. Grand market(ing) plans, but can’t sell a […]

Bottom up is not more (of the same) workshops but at the bottom of the organization. Changing the geography of […]

Culture is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can host the most beautiful and sophisticated developments, enhance people’s life, […]

I suggest we aim at a package of shifts in organizational life: a 10 point manifesto, the Remarkable Organization Manifesto […]

In my dealings with organizations of many sizes and shapes, cultures and geographies, I always find very fine individuals of […]

Your linguistic and behavioural frame must be in sync. Story, values and behaviours need to be solid and well connected. […]

I sometimes think that many global ‘one company’ initiatives are missing the point. The intentions are good: ‘look, we are […]

Winston Churchill said, referring to the Houses of Parliament in the UK, ‘We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us’. […]

Here are my top five from my organizational consulting work. The paraphrasing is mine, the ownership is shared with my […]

Some organizations, or groups inside the organization, suffer from lack of self belief. You could say weak self esteem. The […]

I believe that one of the fundamental types of leadership in this Century is Backstage Leadership™. This is the art […]

Peer power: if managers say, ‘safety is first’, the impact may be relative. The dictation is totally expected. This is […]

The snap shot of the company as pictured in an organizational chart, is probably one of the most fictitious works […]

Our traditional management education has almost 100% focused on the formal organization, the structural fabric of teams, divisions, groups, committees […]

The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]

Increasing the connectivity of people, who will benefit from enhanced collaboration, to achieve good things better, faster, differently, is a […]

In an experiment by Nicholas Christakis‘ team they tested the power of Artificial intelligence (AI) led bots (read pieces of […]

We have made character, virtue or goodness uncomfortable terms in the organization. They seem to provoke some sort of red […]

Audiences receive messages, whether at your Town Hall meeting or your keynote speech. Communities use what they have ‘in common’ […]

I don’t know where this quote comes from, but I have always seen it as a source of reflection on […]

Scientism is taking over management, so anything that can be expressed in scores and numbers is glorified regardless of the […]

Alternative title: A plan longer than six months to see initial success, is not worth the money. I suppose the […]

Since we all love conceptual frames, it is not surprising that in the area of ‘change management’ there are a […]

By all means, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ (by the way, Gandhi never said that), […]

These are the symptoms. Indicators, red flags, culture makers. If you have more than 5, you are in trouble. 6 […]

Reflective leadership has gone into progressive short supply. In an era where prescriptive answers seem to dominate reflective ones, it […]

‘Lasting capacity’ must be a keyword for change management and its methods. The issue today is less about how to […]

Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas […]

Deprogramming is a form of management detox. We navigate and work in organizations with a great deal of automatic pilot, […]

Culture is the difference between 30 people making a decision in 30 days, and 3 people making the same decision […]

Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas […]

I put framing at the top of the list on ‘leadership tasks’. One of those non-rocket sciences around us that […]

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]

Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas […]

A while ago, a telecom client complained to me about his particular division which seemed to work entirely ‘on relationships’. […]

Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]

Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]

Our concept of organizational culture as a receptacle for values, beliefs, attitudes, mindsets, ways of doing, written rules, unwritten rules, […]

Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]

Renounce adaptation, robustness and even ‘flexibility’ in favour of ‘taking any opportunity to do things you think you could not […]

Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]

Some leaders are very good in a crisis. They may or may not acknowledge that, but the adrenaline of the […]

Extract taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas […]

Extract taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas […]

Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]

Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]

Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]

Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]

The Four readiness drivers I have mentioned in previous posts are: Rapid Reaction and Reconfiguration (RRR) Focus on your ‘social […]

An interview with Adam Pisoni, American entrepreneur and previously, co-founder of CTO and Yammer, brings back to my table the […]

The word ‘ready’ has at least 4 meanings in any dictionary: 1. Prepared or available for service, action, or progress. […]

This is the famous quote by Rahm Emanuel, who was mayor of Chicago from 2011 to 2019, and before that […]

Nassim Taleb Antifragile concept is perhaps one of the most attractive frames (conceptual, philosophical, practical) we have had recently. By […]

Parachuting in help is daily life in the leadership of organizations. It may take the form of sending leaders from […]

Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile book has this subtitle: ‘Things that gain from disorder’. This is a model for the new organization […]

[1] When on the road going back to normal, with catching up in mind, as if trying to find the […]

I miss the sight of the very important people, the super-men and super-women of the British Airways business lounge in […]

I don’t know about you, but I have used the expression ‘in the grand scheme of things’ many times in […]

Nassim Taleb has written about ‘antifragile’ as the quality of ‘growing from disorder’. He says that the opposite to fragile […]

Spot the difference at the dinner party or barbeque. So, what do you do Joe? [You must start with ‘so’ […]

Consistently attributed to physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who had no time for sloppy thinking, ‘not even wrong’ has become a category […]

If you work in a corporation with headquarters and affiliates, scattered in many places, or with international sites, you will […]

Interrogated by a journalist: ‘Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?’, Mr Gandhi answered:  ‘I think that it […]

Many organizations seem to run layers of parallel initiatives, all directed at noble goals, and in many cases, without talking […]

The traditional thinking about divisional and functional structures within organizations, which were born of the need for specialization and a […]

Cost cutting, cutting to the bone, cutting resources down to the bare minimum is praised as efficient. But it’s not. […]

I am your customer, you are my customer. When I need to provide you with something, you are my customer. […]

A while ago, my brand new iPhone was stolen at the airport, having left it behind on a table for […]

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”, says the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. This quote comes in […]

Way number 1: My team has come up with these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you […]

Readers of my books and clients will be aware that I am not very fond of 360 degree feedback used […]

The trouble with consensus is that it contains all the risks of poor thinking and all the possible cognitive biases, […]

‘The exercise was very rich, everybody participated deeply, the walls were full of flipcharts with stuff. So many ideas floating […]

Some people have a hero within. They have this tremendous ability to mobilise energy, jump in when big issues present, […]

If you look at political marketing, and the place to look for a serious PhD in communications and their segmentation […]

Discovering’ an old article that I wrote years ago, when I used to have a management column in a monthly […]

With the best of intentions, to call an organization a Democracy is an abuse of the term, unless of course, […]

Vocation is often defined as ‘a strong feeling’ to do something, a job, a career, an occupation, to dedicate one’s […]

It is said that in any organization, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I often think that […]

Chinese proverb that is, what else? I wish we could be as crystal clear when it comes to the characteristics […]

Working in a ‘non-place place’ can’t deliver inspirations and aspirations. Ideas need infections, not Clinical Isolation Units. Marc Auge is […]

Organizational anthropology sounds like a grandiose academic affair. You may imagine the anthropologists armed with notebooks and cameras capturing the […]

‘Science advances by a series of funerals’. This is how John Brockman, founder of The Edge, and editor of a […]

There is so much to fix and manage inside the organization that the task could be never ending. Soon, and […]

‘Change management’ usually forgets a vital component: the things that don’t change or need to change, or, indeed, must not […]

I shared yesterday the tragedy of the obvious. The obvious that is so obvious that we don’t see it. Read […]

A man was leading a caravan of donkeys and crossing the border almost every day, coming back with apparently the […]

Employee empowerment is an output, an outcome. If you start thinking of employee empowerment as an input, something you are […]

You are stuck when confronted with dilemmas. Maybe contradictory business decisions, or maybe the need to choose between two evils. […]

Business loves inspirational stories. The world of entrepreneurship and leadership constantly draw on stories. Many people love sports analogies. Some […]

The great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote about the early 20th Century Spanish society as being ‘led by […]

There is a big difference between copying and reverse engineering. Many people in business wish they could copy the great […]

This is an anthropology report. We’ve found this tribe: the people all wear the same multi-coloured clothes. They paint their […]

I have always been a bit wary of people who repeatedly define themselves by what they are against. It makes […]

I am of course paraphrasing Mario Cuomo’s ‘You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose’. Cuomo (1932-2015) was an American […]

Friends, my heart is broken today. The UK is leaving the European Union tonight at 11:00 pm continental time. Many […]

Some organisations, or groups inside the organisation, suffer from lack of self belief. You could say weak self esteem. The […]

Arriving at the clean and clinical Stockholm airport, my pre-booked taxi is failing me. I have some time to spare […]

If you had to build an organization from scratch, or re-design one, you would have options about some models to […]

There are times when you get stuck in arguments.  Discussions seem to go nowhere. You are running in circles and […]

Crisis are/constitute inflection points. Also M&A, extraordinary organic growth, relocations, and entering new markets. Keep adding. Pain is inevitable, misery […]

The traditional organization is, amongst other things, obsessed with closure.  It despises ambiguity and puts a premium on the absolute […]

Einstein said, “I soon learned to scent out what was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from […]

Nasim Taleb’s Antifragile book has this subtitle: ‘Things that gain from disorder’. This is a model for the new organization […]

The concept of disruption in management has been applied to innovation before. A disruptive innovation is a technology, process or […]

There is a ‘meeting expectations’ cult in business. It has created its own concept of (customer) services: meet customer expectations, […]

The company is too big to change. We are too small to compete. It’s too early for a Leadership Development. […]

One aspect of my work with organizations that I truly enjoy is to help craft the ‘Behavioural DNA’ that shapes […]

A meeting room without a flipchart is decaffeinated coffee. The absence of a flipchart insinuates possibly lots of talking, perhaps […]

Surprise is a powerful strategy in its own right. Surprise means being ahead of the game, being further ahead than […]

The closest thing to designing and building an organization is the designing and building a house. You can build a […]

Amongst my clients I have a good representation of ‘regulated industries’ such as pharmaceuticals and financial services. I, myself, spent […]

You have bought a pair of very expensive tickets for a classical music concert but the traffic is horrible and […]

Managers are good at messaging and communicating. OK, this is a benevolent assessment but let’s assume this. Also, OK at […]

This is scene one of ‘The Tragedy of Coriolanus’ by William Shakespeare. It says a lot to us. It’s easy […]

‘When the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’ If you have a predetermined view […]

The Business English language (yes, there is one) uses the word ‘accountability’ often associated to the word ‘taking’, as in […]

Continuing with thoughts on critical thinking…. ‘Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then […]

Meeting expectations, exceeding expectations and all that jazz! It’s often said that success equals performance minus expectations. Three comments on […]

‘For every problem, the Victorians have a building’. For every idea that we need to carry forward, we invent an […]

These are ‘functions’ and ‘structures’ in need of spaces in the organization. You may not be brave enough, or crazy […]

Many of us spend quite a lot of our time in what we call ‘work’. The business day now has […]

The degree of comfort in discovering the roots of things, cannot be taken as proof of the truth. The best […]

Is this what people want? Singing along with what the Big Gurus have provided? Music and lyrics? Sometimes I feel […]

We spend too much time seeking predictable answers. They are not necessarily bad. If I work with Peter, Paul and […]

To think out of the box, one has to recognise first that there is a box. Therefore one has to […]

Benchmarking is a rear-mirror strategy. It’s about catching up with something that has already happened. People who spend too much […]

The hour has come. Radical is the word. From the Latin, radix, it means root. We need to get to […]

If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ into the water […]

Many years ago, I got into Decision Analysis at the hands of my good friend Larry Philips of the London […]

Many years ago, I learnt from the UNHCR, the UN refugee Agency based in Denmark, that many global NGOs of […]

Management cultures, particularly Anglo Saxon, love acronyms. This is something new employees need to learn. If coming from another industry, […]

There are always people who ‘don’t get it’, are against cultural change efforts, do not support a programme, torpedo it, […]

The Great Man Theory was born in Scotland, the child of philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 –1881) – “The […]

Back in 1994, Jim Collins, consultant and author, gained a lot of attention with his book Built To Last: Successful […]

Nuccio Ordine, an Italian professor, has written an essay of this title, to my knowledge not translated into English. It […]

A while ago, I was told an anecdote about an MBA student who returned to their alma mater for a […]

List your competitors, then, compare yourself with a different list. Most of the answers lie outside your immediate peer circle. […]

These are the 10 strategic options you have at your disposal all the time, as I use them with my […]

The perfect state of a healthy organization is unfinished. Like a human being. ‘Born too early’ (Campbell’s hero). Finished structures […]

It should not surprise us that people are constantly looking for the magic bullet of leadership. What makes a good […]

“The history of mankind might be described by a cynic as a series of splendid expeditions towards the wrong goal […]

This quote is from an unknown author. He or she must have known a thing or two about the futility […]

I call Collective Leadership that state in the evolution of management teams or leadership teams when the power of the […]

As Mark Twain said himself, ‘The death of the charismatic leader has been grossly exaggerated’. The problem is that ‘charisma’ […]

Today, there are more similarities between a teenager in Shanghai and a teenager in Rome, or Singapore and Madrid, or […]

Behavioural /cultural shaping in organizations does not scale up by simply the leaders having the right mindset and motivation. A […]

Many times in my consulting work, I find myself facing this dilemma. Do I involve many people on the client’s […]

In Latin ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc’. Free translation: B follows A, so A must be the cause of B. […]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clicktivism is the term used to describe the type of pseudo-activism that consists in clicking the ‘Like’ button (Facebook mainly) […]

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

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

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

New units: Certificate of existence = 280 characters (Twitter) Presentation of ideas, maximum attention span = 18 mins (TED) Digital […]

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

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

“A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.”—Fred Ross Fred Ross (1910-1992) American community […]

This phrase is attributed to the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who also described some arguments or theories as so bad that […]

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

So you have The Process and The Outcome dating. You would have thought that they are having a good time. […]

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

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

I explained to a client the logic and principles of the Viral Change™ Platform. I did not want to sell […]

Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]

Modern and not so modern ‘social movements’ with or a without business propositions are portrayed as a concerted and positioned […]

Change management, or management of change. Thank God there can only be two permutations, because they are the most over-used […]

Said Wittgenstein. Language in business and organizations creates frames, but also limitations. And we have lots of these frames. ‘Employee […]

Months ago, I found myself in front of a large audience composed of the highest ranks of the HR function […]

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

Is LinkedIn a Digital Rolodex? A digital Resume/CV Library? Do you connect with people who have already given you the […]

The historical existence of several layers of management in any organization may be related to its size. In a command […]

I must confess I have never been 100% comfortable with the traditional distinction by Warren Bennis between leaders and managers […]

There is an ‘Accidental Literature for Leaders’.  I call this my compilation of poems or pieces of narrative that are […]

Try my Border Diet: A diet to protect yourself against persistent Full Disclosure that the digital world forces upon you. […]

Moses’ leadership was bad. He promised his people a land of milk and honey. Instead, they got a terrible hike […]

Many people, many of them in high managerial positions, succeed by avoiding failure. They become unmemorable by design. A new […]

One of the biggest compliments I’ve received in my consulting life, and one that I have come to appreciate more […]

It’s called the Shirky principle, after Clay Shirky, prolific American author of bestsellers such as ‘Here comes everybody’(2008)  and ‘Cognitive […]

The war on talent. McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what seemed […]

A specialist nephrologist I know well says to me: I get very nervous with all this heart stuff, I don’t […]

Management Theory (if there is one) and management practice are not physics. We don’t have very solid data about what […]

There was this big conference that was introduced by the chairman in this way: ‘Welcome everybody. Lovely to have you […]

A few years ago, the BBC broadcast a series called ‘How we built Britain’, presented by the veteran David Dimbleby. […]

‘Prioritize’ is a word that I particularly dislike because it is overused and  misused in a terrible way. I have […]

No system can be fully understood within the system. No, this is not an esoteric statement but a simple, common […]

A neighbourhood with broken windows and graffiti on the walls says: look how easy it is to break a window […]

I know of a brilliant medical doctor who, in front of a worried patient, perhaps with some imaginary worries, perhaps […]

In a study conducted with Fortune 100 companies, and quoted in Sherry Turkle’s book ‘Reclaiming Conversations’, the following statistics about […]

That was Nietzsche on change management! It goes to the core of the issue of how we all try to […]

Here we go. I’m sounding a little gloomy for a Monday morning. I don’t mean to. Promise. Back in 2016 […]

It is unrealistic to expect upside down disruptive innovation in any business. But the absence of disruptive thinking may be […]

Jerry B Harvey’s 1974 article “The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement’, contains this vignette. On a hot afternoon visiting […]

With some exceptions, there is no such a thing as single, global, monolithic corporate culture. There is usually a confederation […]

1. Postpone. Some great killers postpone everything. They don’t even have to use the language, they simply organise things in […]

Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ‘Faster horses strategies’ […]

Leadership has traditional sources of learning, reflection, role modelling and a ‘body of knowledge’. There are four that dominate. This […]

It’s impossible to listen in a noisy room.  If you want to listen to your breathing, you need silence. You […]

Emotional Intelligence was a paragraph-length concept expressed in a library of publications. At the time it was a shock in […]

William Stafford’s (1914 – 1993) poem reads: The things you do not have to say make you rich, Saying the […]

‘A year from now, you are all here standing in front of the CEO and you say: we screwed up! […]

Powerful oversimplifications’ was the term used by Bruce Henderson, founder of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to define the matrixes, […]

Our traditional management education has almost 100% focused on the formal organization, the structural fabric of teams, divisions, groups, committees […]

Communicating, triggering behaviours, sustaining them and creating a culture, are all connected, interdependent, overlapping and parts of the chain of […]

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that […]

In caricature, this is a 3 point strategy to develop further. It’s a simple mental and practical frame. Build an […]

10 key behavioural competences of people to understand what is going on. Small sample of my collection. These are 10 […]

Each large or not that large organization needs one. This tribe is composed of people who have a natural ability […]

Organizations need a Rapid Reaction Force. OK, unless you are in the military, it does not mean military fatigue uniforms […]

Some people in organizations believe that they are working in a very bureaucratic, hierarchical, political and rigid environment. Many of […]

From time to time you see the occasional and mostly not very solid comparisons between ‘the company’ and a religion. […]

The language of leadership is often plain and monotone. Used to explain slides and with a screen behind, leadership language […]

We all have our share of ‘difficult people’. Conventional management of change has taught us that there is always going […]

Behavioural /cultural shaping in organizations does not scale up by simply the leaders having the right mindset and motivation. A […]

Feeling trapped, is at the core of some aspects of one’s mental health, and also organizational distress. The deep awareness […]

What should employees be loyal to? Ask an average leader: to the company, of course. Loyalty may be disguised. It […]

In my organizational consulting work, and in behavioural terms, I am very used to be told, and challenged, that there […]

I said yesterday that for large scale mobilization of people (AKA social movements, AKA company culture), it needs a platform. […]

I wish I could remember where I did read these stats.  Russia under the Tsar 1914-1917…had 180 million peasants and […]

In the era of digital semi anonymity, personal contact wins. In the era of corporate email broadcasting, personal contact wins. […]

Whether in society or inside the organization, we have plenty of ‘theories of change’ surprisingly unchallenged. Can we please look […]

Over the years, I have had lots of conversations about ‘corporate culture’ and in particular  ‘what to measure’. I must […]

Grandiose plans get sabotaged by small things. Many years ago, I was involved in what was going to be a […]

The new, emerging organizations, many people would agree, are more collaborative, more leadership-distributed, less top-down, with more levels of empowerment […]

These two statements represent a form of magical thinking of the kind seen in ancient humans (clouds) and todays humans […]

Many clients have expressed this thought over the years: ‘Leandro, we are so good at crisis!’ And indeed they were!  […]

I owe this to Nassim Taleb (‘Fooled by Randomness’ (2007), ‘The Black Swan’ (2008), ‘Antifragile’ (2013). As a traveller of many years […]

In my experience, people can understand budget cuts, but there are several types of acceptance, leading to several levels of […]

I can’t remember where I saw this. This is part of the point. It could have been anywhere. But I […]

A recent senior hire in a client company commented to me that the thing that most impressed her in the […]

The ‘expectations muddle’ of empowerment has different shapes and flavours: I expect you to do something but you don’t think […]

Here is a ‘very novel’ concept. Employee Engagement is needed because… it’s good in and of itself. Because work enhances […]

Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and psychologist, Oxford professor, has formulated that 150 was the “cognitive limit to the number of […]

There is evidence, intelligently articulated by Phil Rosenzweig in 2007 (The Halo Effect), that a series of measures of employee […]

There must be a better way than having 200 consultants landing in my company and doing the stuff for me, […]

I have explored this theme before in my Daily Thoughts, but I feel compelled to go back! Behavioural issues, whether […]

What type are you? How our mental models work is part of the Minimal Introspection, something we tend to overlook, […]

Whilst the holidays roll on, here is a leadership theme to consider Picture this organization.  Closed culture, culture of secrecy, […]

Good Morning! The following article extends on our recent series on leadership this week. In the book by Gary Hamel […]

Good Morning!  Here is the last of our series of three on Leadership this week. Recently, I keep finding myself […]

‘Lack of communication’ or  ‘a communication problem’, is perhaps number one declared culprit in most of our troubled organizational life. […]

Morning to you.  Here is my second post in a series of three on Leadership: Don’t define leadership for me. […]

We praise people because of their ‘clarity of mind’. We say, ‘she is a good manager, she knows what she […]

Continuing my revised 12 laws of social change at a scale. Very simple laws apply to any large scale change […]

My revised 12 rules of social change at a scale.  These very simple laws apply to any large scale change […]

Our faith in communication is enormous. Why? Perhaps because we know well the problems associated with the lack of communication. […]

Years ago I was talking to a client, a Senior VP in the company, about a project that had to […]

This week, I offered 10 types of people that challenge the status quo in organizations. I also mentioned that our […]

Who challenges in organizations? People who have nothing to lose People who know that the art of challenging, equals not […]

Often you see people in organizations disillusioned with changes, considering themselves survivors of the yet another reorg, getting on with […]

The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person […]

Serious behavioural change? Start with micro-behaviours, then walk backwards to values, never the other way around. And bring peer-to-peer or […]

Forget work-life balance. It was a good concept that did a lot of good but has now retired. It cannot […]

The fastest and best way to build a creative culture is to have lots of creative people together. No kidding. […]

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

Perhaps the  best we can do for the next generations is to understand their dreams. They are not the same […]

We need teaming up, but we may not need more teams. We need role-modelling but may not need to call […]

Let’s revisit re-framing techniques. I covered this in a previous Daily Thought but still relevant today. Take  a look at […]

It’s 2019 – I wanted to revisit this from 2018 – are corporations developing, evolving, transforming, adapting….? And old sticker […]

A simple exercise that leaders can do, either on their own with paper and pen, or with their management team, […]

A ‘Daily Thought’ taken from one of my Leadership series’. Gold leadership, is the one above silver and bronze, that’s […]

One of the key rules of activism (social, political, cause) is not to spend more than the minimum necessary time […]

Something for the weekend. Written back in 2017 but still rings true today! We naturally retreat to comfort zones. If […]

Another important idea (first published in 2016) worth revisiting. Enjoy! You can’t inject happiness in the organization. You can’t put […]

A previously posted Daily Thought – well-worth revisiting. John Le Carre, British ex secret intelligence serviceman, espionage writer, dixit. He […]

The formidable Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy (who declares that has ‘an attractively vague job title which has allowed […]

On one side, taxes are good, big government, social welfare, fighting for social justice and social mobility, human rights, women […]

Standard Operating Procedures, strategy documents, all normal process and systems and the organization chart are the headlines. If you really […]

It is counterintuitive to managers but not to cognitive scientists. Given airtime to an issue is not always a good […]

A few days ago, I went to a conference. It’s unusual for me these days because I have close to […]

The Good Mechanics of Continuous Improvement have given us a culture of feed-back. Feed back is worshiped. There is a […]

Sorry for the medicalization, an annoying legacy in my brain from many years of diagnosing and prescribing. Unlike many other […]

It’s terrifying. You are in front of an inquisitorial crowd, maybe your own people, and have to say, I don’t […]

I don’t know anything about boilers. Only that they are prone to take sabbaticals and stop delivering. In many cases […]

I published this ages ago. Some people have asked me to repeat… since the robots are still coming and apparently […]

I have been researching for a while the not-that-easy topic of ‘cognitive mental frames’ or ‘mental models’ that take over […]

We can measure anything. Vital things, rubbish things, relevant, secondary, soft, hard, anything. We have been told by the Wise […]

What is authenticity? For starters, a very nice word. One of these that we love to attach as a command: […]

First published in September 2018. An American educator said that children entered school as a question mark and left school […]

First published in August 2018. We are used to look at the cost of doing things. And rightly so. We […]

First posted back in January. Most of our organizational problems are behavioural. Structural answers hardly solve behavioural problems. Amalgamating A […]

First published in November 2018 If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for more […]

Socrates said. Or Plato said Socrates said. Socrates never wrote a word. He did not trust them. They were the […]

This is a question always  tempting leaders to give an answer. Eager to show that people will benefit, we spend […]

My mind is not for change. Look how strong I am. In the Brexit context, the discussion has often been […]

Space to reflect? Where is that? Are you saying we are not reflective? Don’t we have an intelligence? Are you […]

I know leaders who are obsessed with this: the systematic use of feed back between managers and staff, between people. […]

We are pulled to conform to the group, to participate, to contribute, to say something. Nodding is not enough. Taking […]

In this model, the employee (1) is an activist, (2) largely working peer-to-peer, and (3) progressing towards (if not arriving […]

Here is a ‘very novel’ concept. Employee Engagement is needed because… it’s good in and of itself. Because work enhances […]

This is model 4 of the series.  The concept is simple. Imagine that you, as an employee, are in reality an […]

(the series on Employee Engagement will continue later) Organizational dynamics are full of ‘default thinking’. We assume that some things […]

This is model 3 (but the 4th post, confusing!)  ‘The Cause’. Employees join forces to work on a Cause: green agenda, corporate […]

This is model 2 in the pack of 6 that I have described. There is a book, or two, and its […]

Model 1 of my 6 is what I call, ‘Air time’. It translates into: ‘we recognise that employees’ views are not properly […]

Over the next 7 days, we wanted to revist a series of posts from 2017, exploring the important topic of […]

In yet another experiment by Nicholas Christakis team (see previous Daily Thought on mistakes by robots!) they tested the power […]

Being open about mistakes, own mistakes, team mistakes, has always being considered a driver for trust. If I as leader […]

First published October 2018 If you love KPIs, here is one. The attractiveness of your (corporate) function is defined by […]

First published back in 2016 Plato told us in his Symposium that humans were originally androgynous, not men or women. […]

First published in November 2017. This is the request we make at the beginning of a Viral Change™ programme. Forget […]

First published September 2018 Also called get out of the room and don’t interfere. Also asking the question ‘may I […]

First published back in November 2018. If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for […]

Don’t look at us, at the leadership at the top. We are the wrong mirror. Of course, we are committed […]

Every year I review the version of this list and share with my community. Here is again, 2019 mode, with […]

The unwritten rules of the organization tell you more about its culture than all powerpoionts of its leadership programmes. The […]

There are many versions of the same principle. We spend disproportionate amounts of time on issues. We often have deep […]

David Brooks, columnist of the New York Times and author (too conservative for the liberals and too liberal for the […]

Organizational life can go on, driven by management, without asking people about their motivations. These are assumed in a rather […]

Bottom-up is not more (of the same) workshops but at the bottom of the organization. Changing the geography of top-down […]

The ‘critical mass’ concept, as the number of people required to move forward, to change collective behaviours, to see a […]

The Free Rider problem is studied in social sciences and refers to people who benefit from a collective (mainly public) […]

Increasing the connectivity of people, who will benefit from enhanced collaboration ,to achieve good things better, faster, differently, is a […]

I don’t know where this comes from but it’s in posts and posters all over. It’s perhaps one of these […]

People reading these Daily Thoughts may be used to common themes, indeed. After all, I am not writing about nuclear […]

And employee characters, and company culture, and all the unwritten rules of the organization are shaped in the cafeteria, the […]

The process of creativity can be very messy. In fact, it is perhaps necessarily messy. Like the artist’s workshop. The […]

Given our growing impatience and limited attention span (our minds are overheated in the filtering of information, like traffic control […]

Possibility is perhaps the most beautiful word in management. There are organizations in which possibilities seem exhausted, work is an […]

Suddenly purpose is back. We are told that Millennials want purpose. Which may be true. As much as many other […]

Attention Chief Transformation Officers, Offices of Transformation, Change Management Units, and Change Offices, and Projects of Future A,B,C,. Units of […]

The full quote: ‘Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to […]

Yesterday, my wife and I said goodbye to a good friend from France who works as a high level executive […]

Wisdom Nomads go form meeting to meeting. ‘We need to make sure that’, ‘we have to know how this fits […]

Behavioural change is still presented in many quarters with the same language as installing a piece of software. Or maybe […]

Most of our organizational problems are behavioural Structural answers hardly solve behavioural problems. Amalgamating A and B because A and […]

I was used to the concept of catastrophic failure, but not catastrophic success, until I read an article in the […]

Hello from The Chalfont Project Daily Thoughts is in pause mode until the New Year. You can still browse and […]

Some organizations seem to have a love affair with problems. They love their disruptive and furtive nature.  Secret encounters in […]

I could  not sleep, it was almost unbearable. Then I woke up and  the weather was horrible. The traffic was […]

  Culture is the difference between 30 people making a decision in 30 days, and 3 people making the same […]

For as long as anybody can remember in management history, the team has been highlighted as the unquestionable form of […]

Culture is not a project, something to do on top of normal work, an extra, something to get your hands […]

Reposting a favourite from back in April 2017. Enjoy! One of the most toxic practices in organizational life is equating […]

The author Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a most interesting book  about the Lincoln presidency: ‘Team of Rivals’. It says it […]

If you want to learn from biographies of leaders, from their inspirations, about their traits, maybe tricks, read about Lincoln, […]

I owe this phrase to John Kerry whom I had the privilege of seeing on his London tour promoting his […]

I trust you because I can say ‘I haven’t got a clue’ and you don’t think I am an idiot […]

One of the fundamental roles of leadership is to frame the narrative of the organization. This is easy to say […]

I am back to one of my favourites: measuring value. One of my oldest Daily Thoughts told this story. A […]

It’s a typical saying in US politics and I suspect in many other places. It’s a powerful thought. Every day […]

Allow yourself to be a bit inefficient Reinvent some wheels from time to time Don’t always reuse the same presentation […]

Deprogramming is a form of management detox. We navigate and work in organizations with a great deal of automatic pilot […]

The cult of Employee Satisfaction surveys is fading.  Companies are doing less or less frequent. Perhaps there is some tiredness. […]

If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for more or less universal truths, this […]

Says Barbara Webb, professor of Biorobotics, who tries to simulate living organisms behaviours and extrapolate form here. It sounds like […]

Your son’s teacher says: your son John does not hand in the homework on time, quality is poor, we don’t […]

I have seen the same slide yet again. It keeps following me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. OK, not on […]

At a recent conference, one of the speakers explained his recent experience in a building materials, large shop where he […]

As with many modern clever quotes, there is more than one author claiming this. Symptoms of potentially ‘all fools in […]

Multinational companies are values and behaviours schools. It may not be in their mission and vision, in the job descriptions […]

Some organizations that are very good at (external) marketing, are terrible at internal. Grand market(ing) plans, but can’t sell a […]

If you love KPIs, here is one. The attractiveness of your (corporate) function is defined by the number of people […]

Two years  ago, starting in the Midwest of Ireland, a bottom up social movement, ‘Values in Action’, started to shape […]

This has become a mantra used by many leaders to express the desire that people take seriously their commitments ‘as […]

Some organizations are breathless. Frantic. It could be good or bad, usually not too good.  Other organizations are like funerary […]

Malaria is not an increase of temperature in the thermometer Employee engagement is not a score in a Gallup scale […]

For many non-American, non-Anglo-saxon organizations the idea of fun is ‘that American thing’. It’s a bit unfair and reductionistic. I […]

The recent launch of the “Mobilize!” Masterclass has led to much discussion about Social Movements here at Daily Thoughts HQ. […]

These rules apply whether you are an external partner or an internal one. Rule number 1. Resistance is never universal. […]

Do you understand the strategy? Yes Can you see why we need to change, to do anything? Yes Do you […]

Semi connected reflections: [1] We talk a lot, email a lot, reply a lot, post a lot, say ‘I agree […]

A friend of mine Carlos Orozco  uses this analogy. If you are driving a car and you have a puncture, […]

Airtime is finite. Initiatives, activities, tasks, ideas, attention to people, reaching the boss, innovation discussions, programmes, change programmes, leadership programmes, […]

In the previous  Daily Thoughts I suggested: Readiness is a red herring and usually an alibi for not starting something […]

A  client, senior manager, mentioned to me recently that his company spent a disproportionate amount of time ‘getting ready’. He […]

[1] January starts around the 10th of the month. February is shorter and boring. Unless you go skiing, which half […]

An American educator said that children entered school as a question mark and left school as a full stop. I […]

‘Smoking kills’, or ‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ or ‘Get the Flu Vaccine’ are wonderful attempts to warn your fellow citizens […]

Many years ago companies started to say ‘we are organized in project teams’. Professional projectization was the thing. Until it […]

This is an unwritten rule in US presidential elections and a line in a witty and fascinating book by Dan […]

From The Chalfont Project, UK office: Dear all. Dr Leandro Herrero has produced a 5 hour masterclass divided into 28 […]

Also called get out of the room and don’t interfere. Also asking the question ‘may I be, perhaps, actually, the […]

Our thinking is far from rational. What’s new? Perhaps ‘making a rational decision’ should be reframed as ‘making a decision […]

One of my favourite sets of Team Rules. Real life. Not invented. One of my best clients. Always curious No […]

A headline in a newspaper on the 9th of August 2018 red ‘Deutsche Bank Cuts Again. Not Even Fruit Bowls […]

‘To tell you the truth’ is an opening in English conversation. Other similar are ‘to be honest with you’, or […]

Co-benefit is a term broadly used in the Climate Change movement to explain the unintended/extended consequences of actions beyond an […]

Take  a look at these 5 re-frames. You should see the differences not just the simple literary ones but the […]

And old sticker said This is a situation in which I find myself very often: Several corporate groups agree (vocally, […]

A simple exercise that leaders can do, either on their own with paper and pen, or with their management team, […]

We need a revolution in business academia or it will become irrelevant. Apprenticeships  are already far greater value than academic […]

We are used to looking at the cost of doing things. And rightly so. We ask those questions as a […]

And those which are maybe less dangerous than those who aren’t. In an old 2005 study, which findings are very […]

‘Work conquers all’, or ‘steady work overcomes all things’ Virgil dixit. For many, the time of post-break is approaching, if […]

Welcome to the last in our summer recap series. We hope you have enjoyed re-reading some of our favourite posts […]

The second of this week’s recap posts on Social Movements. Enjoy! Tribes in the organization: seeing the world in segments, […]

Normal service will be resuming shortly at Daily Thoughts HQ! But first, we wanted to share some of the best […]

Here is the third of our favourite posts on Leadership. Enjoy and have a great weekend! The ‘research’ for the […]

Here is the 2nd of this week’s revisited posts focused on Leadership… Three magic questions for leaders 1. Will I […]

Welcome to the third in our series of summer “Recaps”, this week focusing on Leadership. We hope you enjoy our […]

Here is the third of our favourite posts on Culture. Enjoy and have a great weekend! Grab the magic thresholds […]

The second of this week’s posts on Culture. Enjoy! Lazy managers love questionnaires No offence to questionnaires. They are legitimate […]

As Daily Thoughts is taking a short summer hiatus, this week we are sending you a few of our favourite […]

Here is this week’s final recap post looking at the Viral Change™ Mobilizing Platform. Have a great weekend! Networks have […]

Here is this week’s second “recap” post on the Viral Change™ Mobilizing Platform. Enjoy!   Change management is dead. Let’s […]

Dear Readers, Daily Thoughts is taking a short holiday! But never fear, over the next few weeks we will be […]

Organizational transformation equals organizational life. Sometimes we add an adjective to signpost a direction. For example, digital transformation. Very often […]

In the old days of my parents, there was an unwritten consensus that your problems in life, your anxiety at […]

Given our growing impatience and limited attention span (our minds are overheated in the filtering of information, like traffic control […]

The answer to individual negativity is group positiveness.  Fighting individual negativity at individual level is a risky fight. If you […]

Increasing the connectivity of people, who will benefit from enhanced collaboration ,to achieve good things better, faster, differently, is a […]

(A similar version of this post was released out of sync with it;’s part 1. Apologies for those who got […]

A glitch in the system made the publication of part 2 of this out of sync and was sent last […]

Teamocracy may be the worst form of people collaboration  except for all those other forms that have been tried from […]

If you talk to my clients, they will tell you that I use cooking analogies all the time. Cook this, […]

Our managerial training and praxis has been quite successful at making us guilty of not focusing enough on a task […]

Give me a sequence, some boxes, a template on steps, lots of arrows and a PowerPoint, and I will create […]

Beloit College, in Wisconsin, creates every year a ‘Mindset List’ It shows a list of facts about a particular new […]

In October 2013, a ship carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. 300 people drowned. As The Guardian journalist Kenan […]

1. Will I regret not doing this? Bezos, Amazon chief. Here it is from a recent article: ‘When faced with […]

Friday 25 May, 2018. Ireland votes 66.4% in favour of repealing the Eight Amendment of its Constitution, inserted in 1983, […]

Today we are in front of daily wars of narratives: political, social, models of the world, futures, concept of Man. […]

For the last, at least, 10 years of my consulting life, I have struggled to confirm the thesis, well publicised […]

Continuous culture shaping within an organization equals social movement: large scale behavioural and cultural change, for a purpose, powered by […]

‘I welcome criticism’ is often an alibi to avoid criticism. OK, that’s as harsh as it goes for a generic. […]

Accustomed as we are to create plans to succeed  on something, this may sound counterintuitive. Creating (serious) plans for failure […]

(1) We plan operations, change, leadership, anything, with intended consequences in mind. These are often translated into KPIs, milestones, and […]

For every community struggling to achieve something, and deciding to launch some form of collective action; for every minority that […]

George Lakoff, a familiar name in these Daily Thoughts, is on a mission. The US cognitive psychology specialist,  emeritus professor, […]

I good friend, expert in Communications, has created her new website with a prominent quote of mine, ‘Change Management as […]

The process of creativity can be very messy. In fact, it is perhaps necessarily messy. Like the artist’s workshop. The […]

In this miniseries I have shared so far four inconvenient truths uncovered by the forensics of ‘change management’ failure: Too […]

Forth in the mini series:  uncovering of truths of the failure of change and transformation programmes, via a reverse engineering. […]

Third installment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Finding: […]

Second installment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Many […]

This five part mini-series (!) is not glamourous. It tries to uncover some inconvenient truths via a reverse engineering of […]

Managing? Leading?  Probably one of the worse dichotomies ever invented. Another day. Engaging? Motivating? Committing? Consider Mobilizing! It means…what it […]

I have held the view for many years that management is ‘by invitation’ (Disruptive Ideas, 2008). For example, I am […]

The word Pontifex (Pontiff in English) is the term associated with the Pope (twitter account…err.. @pontifex, what else?). I love […]

I have referred before to  George Lakoff’s work and his little book ‘Don’t think of an elephant’, which makes the […]

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of many who have described this, but his articulation is the one widely quoted: “The […]

The problem with super efficacy and super efficiency is that what works for a Swiss watch does not work for […]

Structural answers to organizational problems are very unlikely to succeed. Division A people don’t collaborate with Division B people, so […]

Would you join a Facebok with 100 users? A Yammer with few entries? A Twitter where only a few tweets? […]

Learning from mistakes, make mistakes, learn, it’s OK, mistakes are OK, we are human, if we did not make mistakes […]

Toxic people. A sample. The top 12 to watch: The bully who is not challenged The bully who is not […]

Yesterday was International Receptionist Day. Perhaps it was buried in a myriad of International Days of Something. But the receptionist […]

Read. Take a deep breath. Read again. Keep breathing, think about this. ‘The system will prevent itself from solving the […]

New organizations, and old ones in the business of transforming themselves, would be better off learning by heart these two […]

My third framing comment, after (1) framing new behaviours, and (2) the framing of the overall narrative of the organization, […]

I said yesterday that I would put framing at the top of the list on ‘leadership tasks’ I also said […]

I put framing at the top of the list on ‘leadership tasks’. One of those non-rocket-sciences around us that we […]

We never solve problems, we trade them off. The thought is not depressing. It is liberating because it means we […]

If I had a say in new roles for large organizations, I think I would establish this new Division: VP […]

If you follow my Daily Thoughts you would know that I despise Employee Engagement as something that you need to […]

When my daughter was in primary school, I was invited by the teacher to give a presentation to small girls […]

No medium to large size company has a single culture.  No medium to large size French, or British or American […]

Affinity, like-minded groupings and ‘we know each other very well’ works if what you want is to get things done, […]

Our concept of organizational culture as a receptacle for values, beliefs, attitudes, mindsets, ways of doing, written rules, unwritten rules, […]

An 18 year old paper in social anthropology by Marilyn Strathern (then at Cambridge) had the intriguing title of ‘The […]

Employee engagement is an outcome, not in input. You don’t inject engagement or engineer activities to engage. Those do exist. […]

I sometimes think that management thinking, management speak and management education (that includes ‘research’) makes everything possible to avoid critical […]

This is the last one in the series  of 10 Organizational Pathologies, and the longest write up. Sorry! Bear with […]

Attributed to Peter Drucker, we have inherited the ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’. Drucker meant that you need […]

Almost there, two to go. I have posted one pathology per day (see the website) Busy-ness! From all organizational pathologies […]

Over inclusiveness paralysis occurs as a side effect of good intentions. The intentions are usually democratic, egalitarian, based on respect […]

Processes are supposed to provide these three  things A sure and presumably tested path to address repetitive situations, so that […]

‘Postponing’ (AKA as procrastination) maybe healthy and reasonable, maybe not. Cultures are created by behaviours. The best predictors of behaviours […]

In medicine, autoimmune disease is one in which ‘the body produces antibodies that attack its own tissues, leading to the deterioration […]

Hierarchy is dead, proclaim people in the advanced, enlightened, guru-read organization. Hierarchy is bad, ugly, cause of all problems, constraining, […]

Communicate, communicate, communicate, we were told. All the problems go back to communication. This is your default culprit. In doubt, […]

Solutionism  is a common condition in which the energy and airtime of the organization is consumed in finding solutions to […]

I shared yesterday three types of employees I want for the modern organization. Different characters on the payroll. If there […]

My ideal modern organization has different characters on the payroll. If there is a payroll. These are three of them […]

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

I have never found a client that says we don’t need evidence, or data, or facts, or hard measures. Most […]