List

Decision making

  • Decouple discussion and decision-making. Inject a buffer. Relax, it’s not a sin.

    Empirically, it works. It has been mentioned in many places. But the false semi-god of managerial efficiency makes us feel […]

  • The unintended consequences of a well intended decision

    Short reflection, again, for the slow-down period of Daily Thoughts. When intending to obtain A, how many times do we […]

  • A culture of ownership when you don’t own the company (or even when you do)

    It has always been a Great Hypothesis. It goes like this: ‘if employees acted as owners, as if they owned […]

  • The cost of doing something versus the cost of not doing it. The second half is often missing.

    Confronted with options and strategies, the cost of doing things is very often the first thing that comes to our […]

  • Chose your problems, before they chose you. We never solve problems; it’s a question of working on the best trade off.

    Since we never solve problems completely, only make tradeoffs between them, it would be good to choose problems before they […]

  • ‘Let’s see what that data says’. The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy lives on.

    Probably we will never be short of data anymore. We even have now Big Data, with big capitals, as a […]

  • Consider culture before attending this meeting ( with thanks to ‘Consider the environment before printing’)

    Do I really, really, really need to attend that meting? Do I really, really, really need to send one from […]

  • The Process and The Outcome: married, just friends, or it’s complicated?

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

  • There will always be hierarchy, power and rituals in the organization. The question is how smart we are to chose the right trade off.

    Every new form of management, or organizational structure and model, contains all the old mechanisms of management and organizational models. […]

  • The indecision is final. Keep calm and wait for the next.

    A previous Daily Thought about decisions mentioned 3 reasons why decision making may be a problem in the organization (1) […]

  • Always explain the trade off. There is always one, and people can always understand it

    Many problems with decision making inside the company can be attributed to three causes: 1. Bad process 2. Good processes […]

  • I gave money to one of two equally noble fundraising efforts. Why? I don’t’ like robots.

    Same experience in two different trips with two different airlines. The cabin crew at some point launches a fundraising plea […]

  • A small company is not a big company in small. In the growth from small to big, the trouble is in the middle.

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

  • Speed or quality; critical thinking or fast decisions: the OR is today unaffordable.

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

  • Preserving the problem when dedicated to finding the solution.

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

  • Beware of the assumed magic properties of the word ‘Prioritize!’

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

  • It’s possible to change gears, create a Game Plan or align a full team without agonising.

    One of the reasons why I have created a suite of Accelerators is because I believe that sometimes we complicate […]

  • We always have some sort of ‘strategy’. The question is which level, and, does it do what we intend?

    I am still on holiday for a few more days I  was asked awhile ago to re-post this little frame […]

  • The battle for the 3S : Synthesis, Sense, and Simplicity

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

  • However…

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

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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 […]