List

Leadership

  • Leaders, Dealers and Dreamers.

    Leaders. They drive the agenda, the agenda is not driving them. They drive the agenda even when other people think […]

  • If I were the CEO’s speechwriter for a day, this is the speech I would pass on.

    Don’t look at us, at the leadership at the top. We are the wrong mirror. Of course, we are committed […]

  • I wouldn’t hire anybody who is likely to follow the job description.

    The job description is dead. It is replaced by a Lego box, no instructional manual and a map. Welcome to […]

  • Reclaiming the human values language for the corporate world

    Well known Conservative American columnist and writer David Brooks has written a piece in the New York Times entitled ‘I […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • The myth that only change at the top can ensure change within the organization.

    Sure, you need change at the top. You wish to see that the top leadership takes things seriously and that […]

  • “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”

    John Le Carre, British ex secret intelligence serviceman, espionage writer, dixit. He knows about danger, and apparently about the danger […]

  • Have you heard the one about the three envelopes? There is a whole Theory of Management behind.

    This is an old joke and a current non-joke. Here is the story copied from one of the multiple write […]

  • Invitation: The year of Bullshit Detection

    I declare myself allowed to use the word bullshit, which official definition is nonsense, lies, exaggeration, foolish talk, pretentious talk, […]

  • Possibilities! @ 581

    I want to start 2016 Daily Thoughts with this word. Possibilities. This is Daily Thought number 581, and the first […]

  • 10 reasons why leaders need to focus on the (un-managing of the) informal organization

    Our traditional management education has almost 100% focused on the formal organization, the structural fabric of teams, divisions, groups, committees […]

  • ‘You can have any colour of leadership as long as it is white’. This is our “Ford translation’ in organizations.

    Henry Ford said that you could have ‘any colours of a car as long as it’s black’. The colour to […]

  • The formula about what to do when ‘leadership does not get it’, finally revealed.

    There are always people who ‘don’t get it’, are against cultural change efforts, do not support a programme, torpedo it, […]

  • 3 Inconvenient truths about leadership and change

    (1) If the top leadership of the company does not leave to expectations, and don’t exhibit the values/behaviours that you […]

  • Empowerment is an output. Only if you can visualize it, you can craft it.

    Employee empowerment is an output, an outcome. If you start thinking of employee empowerment as an input, something you are […]

  • In praise of tension. Consensus as permanent state in the organization, is collective coma.

    The trouble with consensus is that it contains all the risks of poor thinking and all the possible cognitive biases, […]

  • “A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.”

    Chinese proverb that is, what else? I wish we could be as crystal clear when it comes to the characteristics […]

  • Calling the Activists. Calling you.

    I started these Daily Thoughts about 565 days ago, give or take, or at least this is the number of […]

  • Bring in the Buffers. Noise Amplifier people create loud tsunamis from a drop of questions in the organization

    Noise Amplifiers. These people will pick up a little piece of problem, a little noise, a little breath of restlessness […]

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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 […]