List

culture and behaviours

  • I love Apple, I hate Apple: could the discussion on culture be slightly more elevated?

    An article on the Apple culture ( What Apple employees say about the company secretive culture? ) is a fascinating […]

  • Millenials have in common their age. The rest is more about the world we all are in, the meal we have cooked for their dinner.

    In a recent conference, the very sharp mind of Marten Mickos, CEO of HackerOne, ex HP, ex Nokia, reminded the […]

  • Leaders who have little control on things, but who think they have a lot of it, are the ones who fear loosing control most.

    Fear of losing control is a funny thing. It does not seem to correlate with how much control you have […]

  • Dear exec looking for ‘change’. What would you do if told you these things?

    If I told you that you have in your organization a small number of employees who have greater influence than […]

  • 4 types of generosity in the workplace. 2 with epidemic potential.

    Four types: The generosity of the traffic light. Every fixed interval, it let’s you get through. Even it changes colours […]

  • Benchmarking deviance inside the organization.

    A few years ago, community workers for the Save the Children organisation, an internationally recognised non governmental organisation or NGO, […]

  • Trust is an unfair affair. Don’t apply linear arguments. All trust that is solid can melt in the air.

    Trust is the most unforgiving, unfair and disruptive phenomenon in the organization. It takes a while to build, it may […]

  • The Bad Apples Theory on colossal business fiascos. (It’s the basket, stupid!)

    Volkswagen has declared that the Diesel fiasco and the massive installation of software, built in to deceive outputs and pass […]

  • 3 self-sabotage mechanisms in organizations.

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

  • The unsaid and unsayable are at the deeper layers of culture

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

  • We, ourselves are the biggest exporters of problems to the organizations we work for

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

  • From airplane cabin temperature control: warmer to sleep, colder to awake. A culture thermostat lesson for organizations.

    Temperature control of the cabin is used by airlines in transatlantic flights as a way to change behaviour. It may […]

  • The leader who said ‘make your numbers’ instead of ‘have a good trip back’

    A friend of mind remembers one of his bosses very well. ‘Make the numbers’, was apparently his way to say […]

  • Mondays shape Tuesdays. If you could just fast forward…

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

  • ‘We should have done’ and ‘too bad we didn’t’. Don’t push the self-suffocating , negative button

      The cartoon has been all over the place. There is a sad side of the funny side and the […]

  • Culture secret in one line: people look up, and people look sideways. And also down. As simple as easily dismissed.

    People look up. What the immediate boss does and says. What ‘management’ do and say. In some cultures, this is […]

  • Most likely the problem is not ‘knowing’. So, (1) re-training is a distraction; (2) Behaving is the issue; (3) That means culture,

    The oil industry leaders/workers/people in the payroll who triggered the BP oil spill disaster, knew the rules, knew what needed […]

  • ‘Powered by Viral Change TM‘: a Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

    Viral Change™: Our social movement platform plus ‘Operating System’ is 15 year old this year. When we started to work […]

  • Single track thinking, the road to a sure end (if your don’t care whether it’s the right end or the wrong end)

    ‘Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop’. That was Lewis Carroll advice […]

  • Take over a grey area, adopt an orphan project, sponsor an idea in exile

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

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      Daily Thoughts

    September 27th, 2023

    Redefining Talent Wealth

    The war on talent McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what it […]
    September 8th, 2023

    What I Learnt From The Monks: A Little Anthropology Of Leadership And Space On One Page

    My friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]
    August 23rd, 2023

    Can We Rescue DEI From Its Trap (The Label)?

    Most of the problems and challenges in organizations, together with most of the solutions, are behavioural in nature. It’s about […]
    August 10th, 2023

    Restructuring to force collaboration, is likely to create more anxiety than collaboration. Structural solutions for behavioural problems hardly work.

    Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. ´A people´ don’t talk to ´B people´; if […]
    July 18th, 2023

    The ‘Impossible To Disagree With’ School Of Management

    ‘Good leaders have empathy, respect employees and set the example. If you want to change things, you need to have […]
    June 29th, 2023

    Large scale change is not small scale change repeated many times. Small wins repeated are lots of small wins.

    Large scale change, as a series of cascading small scale interventions (often under the philosophy of ‘small wins’) has dominated […]
    June 6th, 2023

    Culture change is not long and difficult. But we make it so…

    I suppose the question is how long is long and how difficult is difficult? In general, business and organizational consulting have […]
    May 19th, 2023

    Value is an overused term in business and, as such, it’s becoming meaningless

    Value, as usually used, means transactional monetary value. Usually it doesn’t mean intrinsic value, or value per se. For example, […]
    May 4th, 2023

    The importance of ‘critical thinking.’ Your own critical thinking is more effective at making your workplace better than any generic employee survey.

    Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket […]
    April 21st, 2023

    ´Busy-Ness’ Is A Trap

    I went to a big conference where I was introduced by the chairman like this: “Welcome everybody. Lovely to have […]
    April 14th, 2023

    Training and culture change. The love affair that ends in tears.

    It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that if we just put individuals […]
    April 11th, 2023

    Teamocracies and Networkracies have different citizens: in-Habitants in team-work, riders in net-work

    The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]
    April 5th, 2023

    3 Ways To Get Approval From Your CEO Or Your Leadership Team

    Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us […]
    March 29th, 2023

    A Cheat Sheet To Create A Social Movement Tip = to shape organizational culture since both are the same.

    Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]
    March 16th, 2023

    Critical Thinking Self-Test: A 10 Point Health Check For Your Organization And Yourself. If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply.

    Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure […]
    March 9th, 2023

    A culture of safety or a culture of training in safety?

    Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated […]
    March 2nd, 2023

    Empowerment is an output. If you can visualize it, you can craft it.

    The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? Employee […]
    February 24th, 2023

    A simple question will jumpstart your organization into change. It will also save you from months of pain spent reorganizing your people and teams.

    The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, […]
    February 20th, 2023

    Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks – If you don’t lead via peer-to-peer networks, you’re only driving your car in first gear.

    Peer-to-peer work, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the […]
    February 7th, 2023

    Write a script, not a strategic plan

    If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, […]
    January 26th, 2023

    3 self-sabotaging mechanisms in organizations

    Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]
    January 10th, 2023

    Who should be involved in culture change? All inclusive versus going where the energy is.

    Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s […]
    December 23rd, 2022

    Tell what won’t change – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

    In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they […]
    December 16th, 2022

    Scale It – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

    When creating effective change in any organization, there are 40 rules that, in my experience, are the key between success […]
    December 5th, 2022

    Assets & Strengths Base – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

    For more than 30 years I have been involved in ‘change’ in organizations. Again and again, some fundamental principles, and often […]
    November 25th, 2022

    Campaign It… is 1 of my 40 rules of change

    When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change […]
    October 31st, 2022

    Hybrid or not hybrid? That’s not the question…

    Culture is the new workplace If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of […]
    October 24th, 2022

    ‘Powered by Viral Change™’: A Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

    When we started to work on Viral Change™, as a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change, and […]
    October 14th, 2022

    Corporate tribes, intellectual ghettos and open window policies

    We talk a lot about silos in organizations usually in the context of Business Units or divisions. But these are not […]
    October 7th, 2022

    Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

    Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is […]