List

Leadership

  • Leadership dialects: you are supposed to join a party, but don’t get an invitation

    The language of leadership is often plain and monotone. Used to explain slides and with a screen behind, leadership language […]

  • Slow Change, Fast change. Mobilizing people: the alternative view

    Whether in society or inside the organization, we have plenty of ‘theories of change’ surprisingly unchallenged. Can we please look […]

  • 15 things to look for in a culture

    Over the years, I have had lots of conversations about ‘corporate culture’ and in particular  ‘what to measure’. I must […]

  • The tyranny of the small things

    Grandiose plans get sabotaged by small things. Many years ago, I was involved in what was going to be a […]

  • Will the last employee in Command and Control Inc/Ltd/Plc/SA please turn off the lights? (But have a good lantern with you)

    The new, emerging organizations, many people would agree, are more collaborative, more leadership-distributed, less top-down, with more levels of empowerment […]

  • Empowerment: the muddle. The wrong conversation, until you start unpacking the concept and dismantling the house of buzzwords.

    The ‘expectations muddle’ of empowerment has different shapes and flavours: I expect you to do something but you don’t think […]

  • There must be a better way (I have good news)

    There must be a better way than having 200 consultants landing in my company and doing the stuff for me, […]

  • Iconic leadership: the illusion of copying a one off

    Whilst the holidays roll on, here is a leadership theme to consider Picture this organization.  Closed culture, culture of secrecy, […]

  • The 3 Grand Ds (‘Direction, Discovery and Destiny’), have also their 3 little personal and powerful ‘d’ sisters.

    Good Morning! The following article extends on our recent series on leadership this week. In the book by Gary Hamel […]

  • The best question is the one which has no answer

    Good Morning!  Here is the last of our series of three on Leadership this week. Recently, I keep finding myself […]

  • It takes only one question to know about your model of leadership (and there is always an alternative question, just in case)

    Morning to you.  Here is my second post in a series of three on Leadership: Don’t define leadership for me. […]

  • My contradictions are my friends, and they come with me as leader

    We praise people because of their ‘clarity of mind’. We say, ‘she is a good manager, she knows what she […]

  • In the War for Attention within your company, you may need a communication ceasefire

    Our faith in communication is enormous. Why? Perhaps because we know well the problems associated with the lack of communication. […]

  • Innovation? Great, but I am not in charge of it!

    Years ago I was talking to a client, a Senior VP in the company, about a project that had to […]

  • ‘Nothing new under the sun’ ? Take off your sun glasses and stop the Valium

    Often you see people in organizations disillusioned with changes, considering themselves survivors of the yet another reorg, getting on with […]

  • We need the aliens. Everybody needs aliens. Smart aliens who can ask questions and open Pandora boxes for us.

    The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person […]

  • Micro-behaviours plus peer-to-peer equals social change dynamite

    Serious behavioural change? Start with micro-behaviours, then walk backwards to values, never the other way around. And bring peer-to-peer or […]

  • Work-life balance: the on-off switch is broken, and they don’t make them any more.

    Forget work-life balance. It was a good concept that did a lot of good but has now retired. It cannot […]

  • Change is great, you go first.

    It’s 2019 – I wanted to revisit this from 2018 – are corporations developing, evolving, transforming, adapting….? And old sticker […]

  • You want A, but you are systematically reinforcing B.

    A simple exercise that leaders can do, either on their own with paper and pen, or with their management team, […]

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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 […]