List

Culture

  • Amateurs borrow, professionals steal

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

  • If the business is the mission, culture is the strategy

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

  • What is the ‘model of the world’ in this organization?

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

  • Some company cultures are works of fiction. Some leadership teams ‘harrypotter’ a narrative that nobody else recognizes.

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

  • 10 principles behind culture, behind ‘Employer Branding’, and behind anything that has to do with the DNA of an organization

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

  • Culture is in the A list, the one where ‘work’ sits. Not in the B list (‘when I have time, after A’)

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

  • Yes, there is a new workplace now. It’s called culture.

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

  • A ‘culture of X’ is not the same as a culture of ‘training on X’. Safety is a good example.

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

  • 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 […]

  • I challenge you with this quiz, when applied to your own organization.

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

  • History is constructed. The leader’s legacy is not retrospective. We build it daily, so we’d better test it.

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

  • The One Global Culture does not exist. But pretending that it does holds us together.

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

  • We, ourselves are the biggest exporters of problems in 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 people who […]

  • Grab the magic thresholds in the organization’s life

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

  • The internal-external mismatch says a lot about companies

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

  • I dread ‘robust’ and ‘sustainable’ cultures

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

  • The collective as a bad sum. When collaboration becomes co-recreation and the sum is smaller than the parts.

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

  • Behaviours are the syntax of the organization. Values are the grammar. Your space in the world is the story.

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

  • From ‘us and them’ to ‘us with them’. Don’t kill the ‘us’ on behalf of a fictitious ‘global’.

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

  • 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’. […]

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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 […]