List

Culture

  • Organizations don’t learn. People do. Sometimes too much. So where does company memory come in?

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

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

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

  • Organizational thrillers, little apocalypses and skies not quite falling: another random day at the office

    We have a phenomenal challenge in France. Our people there ‘don’t get the values’, are very cynical and, to make […]

  • Mindfulness, the new solution. Oh, sorry, I forgot, what’s the problem?

    Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, software millionaire, has discovered mindfulness. And has installed ‘mindfulness rooms’ in the Salesfore building in […]

  • And the frog said, next time buy yourself a thermometer

    The old tale of ‘Boiling Frogs’ says that there are too basic ways to boil a frog. One, the frog […]

  • 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 […]

  • My unlikely reflection on my unplanned stop at a Michelin star restaurant

    When travelling today, I found myself, unexpectedly, a few minutes from a little known restaurant, part of a low key, […]

  • What am I building? The 21st Century leader says. Where am I going? Some leaders used to say.

    There is a theme in many traditions that describes ‘the way’ as something that is not simply ’there’ but that […]

  • How can I think out of the box? I can’t find the door

    Our box is incredibly sophisticated. It has the latest quality walls, sofas, working spaces and lots of meeting rooms. I […]

  • A culture of X is one where X is part of the normal conversation.

    What is a normal conversation? Well, pick one or combinations: football, how the kids are doing, the pain of the […]

  • Possibly the most important tribe in the organization is The Brokers.

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

  • Strong thinkers are critical thinkers. Critical thinking can be embedded in the culture.

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

  • Reacting on spot, and responding in agility mode can be engineered and role-modelled.

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

  • Habits have no meaning, they create it. Start with behaviours, get meaning

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

  • The soft stuff, and the hard stuff. Convenient split, but unreal. Leadership is neither hard not soft

    There is business and, then, there is all that stuff about leadership and teambuilding. This seems to be the worldview […]

  • ‘There is nothing I can do’ must be fought before it becomes collective belief.

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

  • Employee loyalty is a plural. Leadership is the host of that plurality, always an irrational mix

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

  • 15 things to look for in a corporate culture if you were a corporate anthropologist (or not)

    No what it’s written in procedures but what is not written in those pages Not how people behave in meetings, […]

  • The organization is not a Grand Bazaar. A transactional model of the firm is a trap. Leaders should get out of it.

    If you push me for a articulation of human relationships, everything is transactional. But in a more specific way, transactional […]

  • Entrepreneurs, volunteers, and soldiers: about the human fabric of the enterprise 2016

    Entrepreneurs develop ideas and create a structure around them in order to achieve goals. As Seth Godin would say, they […]

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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 […]