List

Ideology

  • When I hear ‘this is a culture of consensus’, my Trouble Detector starts blipping

    Organizations can have the flu. And it can become epidemic. The epidemic of consensus is one. The conversation often starts […]

  • A tsunami of navel-gazing, force 11, is impacting business, society and politics. And individual identity.

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

  • The single self-test, one question, I care about.

    I have a simple self-test to deal with the question of legacy. Own legacy, collective, as a company legacy, leadership […]

  • ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ needs more diverse thinking. If people could take out their PC hat, deeper conversations would emerge.

    I often think that the standard ‘diversity and inclusion’ discourse that floats around companies is a bit superficial. It stops […]

  • The Descartes legacy. The tyranny of bipolar thinking is always upon us.

    One of us or one of them. Liberal or conservative. Top-down or bottom up. Progressive or retrograde. Robust or fragile. […]

  • The ‘Non Strategy’ strategy is now a mainstream concept worth studying. And we have a benchmark.

    Imagine you run a large organization confronted with a future-critical, one off, Big Strategic Decision. The consequences may be dramatic, […]

  • WEIRD = Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic. Our management education is crafted in this model

    Yuval Noah Harari uses this term in his excellent Homo Deus book to describe the narrow view that we have […]

  • The Zeus of Management is a god called They.

    If we needed a handy god in organizational life, somebody who could come to the rescue and have the final […]

  • Post-Truth Era: organizational life, please close the windows; stay indoors.

    Several articles in the British Guardian and Observer (Memo to the BBC: balance is not fairness when one side is […]

  • Values don’t pre-exist, their behaviours do, then values are born. E.g: there is no such thing as kindness.

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

  • Have your Big White Board of Distractions in front of you. Keep your list very fresh. Then, execute the strategy.

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

  • Cultural fit = non negotiable + compatible dreams

    Is cultural fit a question of hiring (or converting people into) clones? Not many people would agree. However, the question […]

  • Inquiring, inquisitive and restless minds: positions permanently open in your organization.

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

  • In management of change, as in leadership of organizations, ‘every day is Election Day’

    ‘Everyday is Election Day’ is an expression used in political campaigning and widely used in the masterful Obama campaigns. The […]

  • What is the point? Probably the best answer is when ‘there isn’t any’.

    For sixteen days in June, people could walk over floating peers on Lake Iseo (Italy) , all covered with yellow […]

  • Dont let Tuesdays be shaped by Mondays

    Many people have asked me repeatedly which ones of my Daily Thoughts are my best or favourites. Hard to say. […]

  • The Benign Dictatorship of the Feed Back Form

    You’ve just been to a concert in the Great Hall of your city. Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”. Berlin […]

  • The pilgrimage to the top of the Leadership Mountain to ask for permission, blessings and a bit of gratification.

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

  • Within us, between us and around us. The only 3 chapters of Psychology and the only 3 modules of leadership development.

    Trying to make Psychology easy! There are 3 spaces, and only 3 that matter: Within us: how can we get […]

  • ‘Every word that she says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’. The Post-Truth Era is upon us.

    I’ve learned this quote from an excellent article in The Guardian by Jonathan Freedland about ‘post-truth politics’ (Post-truth politicians such […]

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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 […]