List
Management Education
Managerially educated, template rich, model expert. And now what? Ah! That hernia!
I have come to the conclusion that most executive education of any reputation and high fees, is based upon five […]
7 Platitudes in Organizational Life, in need of a very loud ‘really?’ Louder! And some debunking.
We can do much better than this. But we don’t. On the contrary, we exploit these platitudes and repeat them […]
Jet Skiing Management vs. Scuba Diving Management
The writer Nicholas Carr said about the influence of the Internet in the way he wrote and, in general, in […]
The ultimate goal of ‘Employee Engagement’, or ‘Change Management’, is their early retirement, not to have to talk about them.
I while ago I wrote that the ultimate form of Employee Engagement is a Company of Volunteers. In a ‘company […]
The ‘Great Man’ model of leadership is well and alive, despite largely exaggerated accounts of its death
The Great Man Theory was born in Scotland, the child of philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 –1881) – “The […]
‘Grasps the facts, misses the meaning’: The Leadership Dyslexia upon us
Did we ever, ever have more facts around us? Certainly not. We talk about Big Data. It is of course […]
Manage the inevitable, lead the unpredictable, allow yourself to do both
I’ve written several times about the tired distinction between management and leadership. It had its logic and purpose, and made […]
From ‘us and them’ to ‘us with them’. Don’t kill the ‘us’ on behalf of a fictitious ‘global’.
I sometimes think that many global ‘one company’ initiatives are missing the point. The intentions are good: ‘look, we are […]
No list of ‘The best treats of X’ or ‘The 10 habits of Y’ surprises me anymore.
1. These 9 features (below) define a good manager in Google. 2. You have Google as a model company ( […]
The market for Second Hand Thoughts is flourishing, never been so huge. But outsourcing your mind is the ultimate laziness.
Many of us spend quite a lot of our time in what we call ‘work’. The business day has now […]
Does the distinction ‘leader-manager’ need to be retired? I dare to suggest.
I must confess I have always been, I suspect one of the very few, uncomfortable with the distinction leader-manager. It […]
Management (Education) as Sorcery? Just plagiarizing a dead professor.
Over the years, I have learnt not to trust any expert who starts a paragraph with ‘Research shows that…’ It […]
There are off-the-shelf accounting packages to buy and use. There can’t be such a thing as an off-the-shelf Leadership Development Programme
Avoid off-the-shelf leadership programmes. Pret-a-porter leadership development is attractive but unlikey to be a good answer. There are not universal […]
Not even bottom-up. Certainly not top-down. Lasting organizational change is a polycentric social movement, or it isn’t.
In organizational life we are used to the dichotomy ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom up’, for example, when we talk about change. […]
‘Disruptive’: a word for all seasons, in need of a holiday.
Jill Lepore, author, staff writer at The New Yorker, and Harvard professor of American History has created a little storm, […]
Leadership’s Splendid Expeditions
“The history of mankind might be described by a cynic as a series of splendid expeditions towards the wrong goal […]
‘When the sea was calm, all boats alike; showed mastership in floating’
This is scene one of ‘The Tragedy of Coriolanus’ by William Shakespeare. It says a lot to us. It’s easy […]
No milk, no honey, enjoy the journey
Moses’ leadership was bad. He promised his people a land of milk and honey. Instead, they got a terrible hike […]
Permission to be human
I have had a brilliant two day meeting with a brilliant client. One aspect of my work with organizations that […]
Two wrong Talent Wars
The war on talent. McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what it […]
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