I have been researching for a while the not-that-easy topic of ‘cognitive mental frames’ or ‘mental models’ that take over […]
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The traditional model of change is the one I call ‘destination’ type, that is, how to go from A to […]
New organizations, and old ones in the business of transforming themselves, would be better off learning by heart these two […]
Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]
Command and control management has fewer friends, and it’s quite terminally ill as well. The heirs are fighting for a piece […]
Somewhere in the post-Covid peak, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to pay attention anymore to anything that starts with […]
Employee engagement efforts, ownership values and empowerment behaviours must meet at one point. It’s simple, not terribly controversial, based upon […]
For me, the most damaging use of the employee engagement framework is the widespread one that states that ‘engagement’ predicts […]
Engagement, retention even activism…Traditional models of employee engagement are getting a bit tired. They are starting to look the same, […]
Corporate grade, reporting lines and membership of leadership teams in organizations often go together. But unbundling these components is a […]
Leading a meeting for the purposes of building a team (on top of achieving some business goals) may include a […]
If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to add ‘critical thinking’ to the […]
‘Meetings’ and ‘teams’ are two different things. Team equals meeting, is a cancer. Our language has been perverted. ‘Let’s bring […]
Culture is in the A list, the one where ‘work’ sits. Not in the B list (‘when I have time, […]
If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of work, the post-pandemic work, the […]
Welcome to my weekly focus on culture change, leadership and organizational design. This week, I focus on what culture is, […]
For those of you not yet familiar with the change. Daily Thoughts has evolved. New name and format. Rather than daily, I […]
Daily Thoughts has evolved. New name and format. Rather than daily, I will share with you a weekly focus on culture […]
In case you missed my first edition, sent out last week, Daily Thoughts has evolved. Now a new format, rather than daily, I […]
So, I’m back. But in a different format. Rather than daily thoughts, I will now share with you a regular […]
There is only one strategy test: what will you tell the children? There is only one strategy test: what will […]
‘Daily Thoughts’ is paused, to assess its value and its next ‘presentation of life’. Bear with us. In the meantime, […]
Organizational transformation equals organizational life. Sometimes we add an adjective to signpost a direction. For example, digital transformation. Very often […]
This is one of the many pearls of wisdom from Confucius. Your revenge may kill the adversary but a bit […]
I have not counted the number of TV shows, either side of the Atlantic, that are based on individual competition, […]
An old patient was concerned about her hair. A nurse came in at 7 am to put colour in her […]
One of us or one of them. Liberal or conservative. Top down or bottom up. Progressive or retrograde. Robust or […]
Heraclitus (535 BCE) was probably the father of change management. Two quotes: ‘There is nothing permanent except change’. ‘No man ever […]
Years ago, I persuaded a pharmaceutical client to make three bold moves in one: (1) To create a New Product […]
The old tale of ‘Boiling Frogs’ says that there are too basic ways to boil a frog. One, the frog […]
Banks have had stress tests (imposed) to see how they would cope with difficult market conditions. For example, in the […]
In the previous Daily Thought I shared the simple idea that change management approaches often miss a big elephant in the […]
The change management industry has traditionally missed a big elephant in the room: in times of change, what is actually […]
One of my favourite sets of Team Rules. Real life. Not invented. One of my best clients. Always curious No […]
We often hear the need to put some order in Division A, or to restructure X and Y by putting […]
Probably we will not go back to the telegraph, but when everything is ‘innovatively disrupted’, where will we go? At […]
Organizational performance is unique. Cut and paste does not work. You need to find your own formula. Good to hear […]
In the old Greek tragedies, when the plot became an unsolvable mess, a God (or few of them) came down […]
A publication I once received around the Mighty Davos meeting portrays the views of five expert academics on the topic […]
I had a discussion with a client recently, about the resistance to get rid of complicated processes that almost everybody […]
I got this insight from one of our Viral Change clients in the health care sector. We were talking about […]
We have been exploring briefly in the last days the Steering system of the company under the formula: (1) Space […]
The trouble with value systems is that, very often, they have no proper translation into pragmatic and visible expectations that […]
Yesterday’s Daily Thought introduced the formula: (1) Space in the World (Purpose) + (2) Core Beliefs + (3) Non negotiable Behaviours […]
Many companies operate under some sort of ‘Mission and Vision’ framework, often also accompanied, or preceded, by a statement of […]
Please pray for the soul of incrementalism that, after a long and slow incremental illness, left us for good. After […]
The phrase is from John Lennon who stole it from TS Elliott ‘amateur poets borrow; mature poets steal’. There are […]
In some organizations, daily life and the day to day meetings feel like a Permanent Focus Group. People spend their […]
To continue on the theme of Purpose…after yesterday’s: Purpose is always in the basement Suddenly purpose is back. We […]
One’s true purpose is never finally decided. Like history, purpose is always found backwards and then edited. A little journey […]
If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for more or less universal truths, this […]
Paraphrasing (better, stealing from) American anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) a corporate culture, or, I would say, a subculture that you […]
The description of some company cultures by their leaders may sound like a work of fiction by people inside. I […]
I have on several occasions presented my views on Employer Branding. The trouble with this area, is that it overlaps […]
Every morning in my neighbourhood there is a small window of time when traffic becomes chaotic, slow, painful and frustrating. […]
If I had a say in new roles for large organizations, I think I would establish this new Division: VP […]
The cost of authenticity, of being yourself, is zero. In theory, the cost of pretending you are somebody else is […]
We all know, and have, some heroes in our organizations. People who jump in, solve problems, make themselves available, walk […]
Culture is not a project, something to do on top of normal work, an extra, something to get your hands […]
Facts: abysmal sales in the supermarket chain, strong competitor activity, decreased customer loyalty. Guess what, new CEO. Analysis: old fashion […]
There are hundreds of pieces of evidence including serious research that show that human beings (and animals for that matter) […]
The late Stanislav Andreski (1919-2007) British Professor of Social Sciences, in one of his vintage passages in ‘Social Sciences as […]
Get yourself a copy of the Edelman Trust Barometer. The Edelman company produces an excellent annual report on trust (organizations, […]
Lessons from the Pre-CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual (declassified, in case you wonder). This is how it goes: General Interference with […]
Managing uncertainty is something our brain loves to do. And it loves even more to be helped. At macro-macro-level, Theories-Of-Everything […]
1: The ‘annual’ measurement is artificial. It works for budgets and accountants but not for much more. If a project […]
There is a type of manager/leader who masters the art of listing what you don’t have. We don’t have the […]
The Robust Culture: the culture handles well internal faults and external stress. There may be internal gaps (skills, unfilled positions, […]
This is my rephrasing of ‘The army is now fully prepared for the previous war’, inspired by John Gall, in his […]
This piece of conventional wisdom is almost never true. That ‘they were ready’ is very often a posterity rationalization. Most […]
I often use lines from some of Obama’s speeches, to ask leaders about their sense of destiny, small d or […]
For every community struggling to achieve something, and deciding to launch some form of collective action; for every minority that […]
Whether you are sitting in HR, Organizational Development or any other corporate function, or simply in a position of management […]
Following on from Wednesday’s proposition, the new disciplines of management, ‘The New Classics’ are these 10: 1. Behavioural Economics 2. […]
Amongst the challenges that management has in the 21st Century, which are shared, of course, by specific functions such as […]
This quote is from Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988), American science fiction writer, who was famous for his quotes. This one […]
A true story. A health care worker is truly struggling to do her work and caring for a son who […]
Attention re-structuralists, strategists and people about to be sold a multi-million pound reorganization solution that will solve all those nasty […]
In the previous Daily Thoughts posting, I said that successful growth contains the seeds of its failure. Managing the organizational complexity […]
In our Viral Change™ Programmes, members of the community (company) of activists, invariably ask questions such as, what shall we […]
Scenario 1: The Leadership Team/Top Management Team is in high control mode. They feel they need to make many different […]
Every morning, when we wake up, put our work clothes on and head for whatever is in our Outlook or […]
Apparently nothing can change unless there is as ‘burning platform’. Business and old change management loves that kind of drama. […]
The answer to individual negativity is group positiveness. Fighting individual negativity at individual level is a risky fight. If you […]
And still I get lots of people who raise eyebrows, people who look at me with a conspiracy-like smile (‘you […]
Possibility is perhaps the most beautiful word in management. There are organizations in which possibilities seem exhausted, work is an […]
Sorry for the medicalisation, an annoying legacy in my brain from many years of diagnosing and prescribing. Unlike many other […]
The ‘expectations muddle’ of empowerment has different shapes and flavours: I expect you to do something but you don’t think […]
Continuing my revised 12 laws of social change at a scale. Very simple laws apply to any large scale change including the […]
My revised 12 rules of social change at a scale. These very simple laws apply to any large scale change […]
I like the concept of reinvention, renewal, or transformation. But I like most the concept of rebooting! Organizations, teams, groups, […]
The Self-Proclaimed Saviours will never save you since their only intent is their personal success. It happens in society and […]
A client, senior manager, mentioned to me recently that his company spent a disproportionate amount of time ‘getting ready’. He […]
Sustainability of change, of cultural initiatives, of well intentioned corporate improvements is the key challenge. We are all quite energetic […]
In this model, the employee (1) is an activist, (2) largely working peer-to-peer, and (3) progressing towards (if not arriving […]
Here is a ‘very novel’ concept. Employee Engagement is needed because… it’s good in and of itself. Because work enhances […]
This is model 4 of the series. The concept is simple. Imagine that you, as an employee, are in reality an […]
This is model 3 (but the 4th post, confusing!) ‘The Cause’. Employees join forces to work on a Cause: green agenda, corporate […]
This is model 2 in the pack of 6 that I have described. There is a book, or two, and its […]
Model 1 of my 6 is what I call, ‘Air time’. It translates into: ‘we recognise that employees’ views are not properly […]
‘For every problem, the Victorians have a building’. For every idea that we need to carry forward, we invent an […]
A few years ago, the BBC broadcast a series called ‘How we built Britain’, presented by the veteran David Dimbleby. […]
In WWII there was a curious episode of an injection of critical thinking, not entirely well publicised. Big bomber airplanes […]
The difference between the critical thinker and the un-critical one is not a difference in IQ, or mental strength, or […]
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, a 19th century Swiss mathematician is remembered by many things in his scientific turf, but by one […]
The process of creativity can be very messy. In fact, it is perhaps necessarily messy. Like the artist’s workshop. The […]
Company: Where companions are. Companion = com + panis in Latin, that is with bread, sharing bread of food. ‘Travelling […]
In my consulting work, it is incredibly frequent to see people stuck with a question: ‘but what do they want us […]
A friend of mine Carlos Orozco uses this analogy. If you are driving a car and you have a puncture, you’ll try […]
When trying to understand a culture, there will be plenty of visible things to look at, to hear and to […]
Some cultures a very introspective. In a healthy way. Some are pathologically introspective and spend a lot of time dissecting […]
I don’t like to sound gloomy, but, is the current self-centrism an epidemic of colossal proportions? Or, another way to […]
I have described before the role of managers in many ways, often pointing to the risk of becoming ‘information traffic […]
We are pulled to conform to the group, to participate, to contribute, to say something. Nodding is not enough. Taking […]
I am (in) IT, I work for X (company) I work for X (company), I am in IT These are […]
I trust you because I can say ‘I haven’t got a clue’ and you don’t think I am an idiot […]
This is plagiarism, of course. I am stealing 13th Century Saint, Francis of Assisi’s line: ‘Preach the Gospel all the […]
Let’s start somewhere else. What is the logic behind Listmania? Very often there isn’t one. But starting a note/blog/communication with […]
There is no such thing as kindness. Unless, and until, somebody does something to another human being who can feel […]
I read a while ago this story. Within the highly structured and hierarchical (by design) Catholic church, a Religious Order […]
In my world, ‘corporate’ is synonymous with big structure, big processes and big systems. Of course, it is not its […]
Nassim Taleb’s piece in Medium some time ago entitled The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority is one […]
Accustomed as we are to creating plans to succeed on something, this may sound counterintuitive. Creating (serious) plans for failure […]
Pope Francis, spiritual leader to 1.2 billion people, likes ‘to call a cat a cat’. He has gained a world […]
I said in yesterday’s Daily Thought that we needed to grab the (management) Paradox of Control. The more we lose […]
The more ‘command-and-control’ you practice, the less control you actually have and the more you’ll need to command. In today’s […]
THIS THURSDAY – don’t miss our final live webinar in the ‘A Better Way’ series, when Mark Storm and I […]
Imagine this goal. Let’s shift from 30 people making a decision in 30 days, to 3 people making the same […]
It is perhaps the Age of Inversion. The weights have gone the other way. Globalisation, big G, or small g, […]
These are commonly found uses of the expression ‘they’ within organizations. They won’t approve this They don’t get it They […]
People in organizations spend a lot of time representing somebody else or something else. It feels sometimes that the company […]
Strong thinking and strong ideas are great. We need people to defend them, champion them and feel passionate about them. […]
The trouble with the talking about leadership is that we have made a big basket of it and thrown in […]
Let me share a piece of our own research that has just come up from the oven. In a 1200 […]
Large scale mobilization and alignment of people, united through common goals yet everybody is in different and diverse roles with […]
John Kotter, Harvard Emeritus Professor and prolific author, has made a significant contribution to Leadership and Change for many years. […]
How do you make values live? Install them in a culture? Model 1: You preach them and preach them, and […]
Since we all love conceptual frames, it is not surprising that in the area of ‘change management’ there are a […]
Since employee engagement has become an industry in its own right, and is taking over a lot of air time, […]
Most of our organizational problems are behavioural. Structural answers hardly solve behavioural problems. Amalgamating A and B because A and […]
Stanislav Andreski ( 1919-2007) in his little big book Social Science as Sorcery, writing about the influence of the social […]
Commenting on the communist legacy, a soviet academic Oleg Bogomolov, who must have known a thing or two about things […]
New organizations and old ones in the business of transforming themselves, would be better off learning by heart these two […]
If you had the possibility of designing an ideal organizational structure or redesigning one that you already have, what would […]
There is a difference between listening and just waiting to speak. You can spot people doing either. Some people don’t […]
Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. A people don’t talk to B people; if […]
Any organization has accountability holes, areas where nobody really owns the space. Sometimes these are true ‘grey areas’, sometimes are […]
I broke my antisocial tradition during taxi rides and started a conversation with my Panama driver. I asked him who […]
The fastest and best way to build a creative culture is to have lots of creative people together. No kidding. […]
We were all born as questions. The old saying that ‘children enter school as question marks and leave as full […]
Behavioural/cultural shaping in organizations does not scale up by the leaders simply having the right mindset and motivation. A mechanism […]
Where is home? Ask this question to an Irishman or Irish woman. Even if they have been living abroad for […]
Over the years, I have had lots of conversations about ‘corporate culture’ and in particular ‘what to measure’. I must […]
This is the request we make at the beginning of a Viral Change™ programme. Forget your function and your hierarchical […]
My friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]
In my work as Organization Architect, I have dealt with clients of many sizes, shapes and colours over the years. […]
In organizational life we are used to the dichotomy ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom up’, for example, when we talk about change. […]
Organizations have traditionally used a three-legged approach to creating a ‘culture’: Communications, training and compliance. None of those in isolation […]
It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that, if we just put individuals […]
Serious behavioural change? Start with micro-behaviours, then walk backwards to values, never the other way around. And bring peer-to-peer or […]
Can we work on the collective and reward the individualistic? Well, sure you can, it happens every day. But it’s […]
If I were the one in charge of deciding the ‘person of the year’ for the front cover of Time […]
I said previously that large scale mobilization of people (AKA social movements, AKA company culture) needs a platform. They don’t […]
When I was young, very young, many moons ago, I remember my school mates and the priests having discussions such […]
I wish I could remember where I read these stats. Russia under the Tsar 1914-1917…had 180 million peasants and workers […]
It is said that in any organization, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I often think that […]
It’s a new world out there. You’ll realise this truth if you open the windows of your organization and let […]
I must have heard this for the first time from Tom Peters many years ago. He was, and he is, […]
If you want to execute a strategy, you want to keep cool and move inexorably forward, and if you think […]
Control the conversation. Control the dialogue. Don’t accept a dialogue imposed on you. Common ground is OK, but only if […]
My best friends are monks of the type that don’t talk much. So we don’t talk much. I visit them […]
Daily Thought featured in: Camino – Leadership Notes on the Road Don’t look at us, at the leadership at the […]
Warning: This statement will be dismissed. But, before you do that, I’d ask you to consider the differences between ‘organizational […]
A less spoken feature of great leadership is the art of managing the disappointments created by that same leadership. I […]
Try my Border Diet: A diet to protect yourself against persistent Full Disclosure that the digital world forces upon you. […]
Space to reflect? Where is that? Are you saying we are not reflective? Don’t we have intelligence? Are you suggesting […]
These three organizational ‘magic words’ manage to get mixed up a lot. It’s hard to believe because they are so […]
Did we ever, ever have more facts around us? Certainly not. We talk about Big Data. It is of course […]
The monastic tradition in the Christian world has these 3 magic S that have been present since the Fathers of […]
In caricature, this is a 3-point strategy to develop further. It’s a simple mental and practical frame. Build an overwhelming, […]
There are two ways to carry a baby – in ancient Hinduism tradition – the way of the cat and […]
TODAY’s the day – join me, for my Book Launch Webinar at 17:30 (UK time). Register Now. I’ll be discussing […]
Don’t miss my book launch webinar TOMORROW. Book your seat! I’ll be discussing themes from my new book Camino – […]
Delighted to announce…Camino – Leadership Notes on the Road launches TODAY! You can order your copy or register for my […]
Join my live webinar THIS WEEK. Book your seat! I’ll be discussing leadership as a praxis…’no one is ever a leader, […]
6 days to go until my live webinar. Book your seat! I’ll be discussing leadership as a praxis…’no one is […]
ONLY ONE WEEK to go before my live webinar. Book your seat! I’ll be discussing leadership as a praxis…’no one […]
Join my webinar next week! To mark the launch of my new book: Camino – Leadership Notes on the Road. […]
Don’t miss my Book Launch webinar on 25th March Join me as I discuss Camino – Leadership Notes on the Road […]
Register for my Book Launch webinar on 25th March? Join me as I discuss Camino – Leadership Notes on the […]
Have you registered for my webinar on 25th March? Join me as I discuss my new book – Camino – Leadership […]
My virtual book launch event is on 25th March. Register here. Join me as I discuss my new book – Camino […]
My virtual book launch event is on 25th March. Register here. Join me as I discuss my new book – […]
MY NEW BOOK – CAMINO: LEADERSHIP NOTES ON THE ROAD, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER A Daily Thought featured in Camino: […]
CAMINO – LEADERSHIP NOTES ON THE ROAD NOW AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER An extensive collection of my Daily Thoughts on leadership. […]
Pope Francis has introduced disruption. The head of the 1.2 billion Catholic Church lives in a one bedroom apart-hotel, produces […]
Taken from my new book Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. ‘Nobody is ever a leader. Becoming one is […]
Daily Thought taken from my new book Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Read preview extracts: Camino – Extract […]
Good leaders are a bit like corporate anthropologists. In fact, we are all exotics on the payroll. In my idiosyncratic […]
Taken from my forthcoming book: Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Read Extract Chapter 1 Part 2. Some organizations or […]
Taken from my forthcoming book: Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Read NEW extract Chapter 1 part 2 Imagine that […]
Talking about leadership teams at the top, I often hear ‘they launch these words but they don’t give specifics’, or […]
Taken from my forthcoming book: Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Read NEW extract Chapter 1 part 2 […]
Leadership can be taught, of course, but not in the same way as teaching how to drive a car or […]
Taken from my forthcoming book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. Download an extract of Chapter 1 here: Extract Camino […]
‘A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.’—Fred Ross Fred Ross (1910-1992) American community […]
We call it character assassination for a reason. It’s the ultimate attack. The attack to the uniqueness of an individual, […]
Hillel the Elder, or ‘Rabbi’ Hillel, a Jewish leader who died in 10 CE, is remembered outside the Jewish tradition […]
The purpose of the organization is… The objectives of the strategy are… The reason why we have restructured is… From […]
Taken from my soon to be released book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road. This is a great story […]
Taken from my soon to be released book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road ‘This isn’t a period, it’s a […]
Taken from my soon to be released book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road ‘A man was leading a […]
Taken from my soon to be released book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road Invited to present at TEDx […]
Happy Christmas and New Year to everybody in the Daily Thoughts community. We have all had the most challenging year […]
Four years ago, starting in the Midwest of Ireland and replicating to other parts of the country, a bottom up […]
Today, we are in front of daily wars of narratives: political, social, models of the world, futures, concept of Man. […]
In a large company, what do a leadership development, a culture change and a business integration programme typically have in […]
In this mini series I have shared so far four inconvenient truths uncovered by the forensics of ‘change management’ failure: […]
Fourth in the mini series: uncovering of truths of the failure of change and transformation programmes via a reverse engineering. […]
Third instalment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Finding: […]
Second instalment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Many […]
This five part mini-series (!) is not glamorous. It tries to uncover some inconvenient truths via a reverse engineering of […]
‘Co-benefit’ is a term broadly used in the Climate Change movement to explain the unintended/extended consequences of actions beyond an […]
In my Daily Thought back in September, I suggested that leadership competence-based systems may be better at providing a language […]
A few years ago, I was in the lobby of a global pharma company waiting for my appointment. I sat […]
Small, sometimes entrepreneurial companies (small and entrepreneurial are not the same) enjoy ways of working that are fit for their […]
My very good client BTG plc created a habit of getting leadership teams together to race boats for a day, […]
We have a problem in Division A. Leaders are not doing their job. Leaders are not living the values. Some […]
Madeleine Albright, politician and diplomat; former and first female U.S. Secretary of State, said in her Commencement Speech at Scripps […]
In the short term, the health of all of us depends largely on people following public health rules (masks, distance, […]
A slow growth cancer in organizations. People unnecessarily and gratuitously condemning the company to an impossible future: we will never […]
We are social animals. We live in spaces, with rules, with rituals, in tribal environments. We are both architects of […]
Let me elevate the question of ‘differentiation’ to a higher level. Product differentiation? Sure. How different is different? That is […]
Somewhere along the line, in the history of ‘business’, something went wrong and people took the wrong turn at the […]
Our managerial training and praxis has been quite successful at making us guilty of not focusing enough on a task […]
Despite being repeated a thousand times, hiring processes are still quite imperfect. Of course, there are many places in which […]
‘Continuous improvement’ is part of the management furniture and something that, at face value, one could not disagree with. But […]
Complacency is always a risk, more so when we profess to be immune to it. Sometimes, achieving organizational and business […]
Continuing the conversation on leadership. Yes, we could go forever. Let me make an assumption: that miraculously you’ll have some […]
The modern organization is fluid. People are not necessarily assigned to one place, one team, even one single role. The […]
Collaboration is behavioural, not a process or system. As a behaviour, it can’t be taught. It’s something that some people […]
For CEOs, CFOs, CHROs, and other Cs, and Divisional Ds’, survey after survey try to identify their focus, their concerns, […]
Leadership is a term that describes a relationship. No relationship, no leadership. Leadership can only be defined in terms of […]
Corporate speak is of course tribal. So, to belong, you have to speak the tribal idiom. Through my work, I […]
Nothing is more rewarding than having a CEO who says world-changing things in the news and who produces bold, enlightened […]
Corporate storytelling has been largely dominated by heroic stories, referring to extraordinary circumstances, handled by extraordinary people. They make for […]
‘Walk the talk’ is being consistent: say something and then do what you said you would. ‘Talk the walk’ is […]
Any label that could be equally applied to Mother Theresa, Hitler, your CEO, Kim Jong-un, Mandela, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and […]
The British retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) has ‘Plan A’ as the title of their vast corporate and social responsibility […]
If you followed the two previous Daily Thoughts, you would have got into the idea of ‘Managing by Segmenting Around’. […]
Exercise: take a piece of paper and put names next to each category. Use your organization or an organization you […]
These 8, self-explanatory categories of people are the natural focus of traditional HR and management systems . They are needed […]
Societal issues, clash of ideologies, fundamentalism, political engagement (or lack of it), organizational innovation, Leadership 2020, no matter what direction […]
I have seen the same slide yet again. It keeps following me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. OK, not on […]
Reinventing management to deal with the complexities of the world and, therefore, the complexities of business challenges is something that, […]
Many cultural change efforts fail out of a mathematical mistake. They focus on ‘people in the room’ (conference, off site, […]
Many years ago companies started to say ‘we are organized into project teams’. Professional projectisation was the thing. Until it […]
Give me a sequence, some boxes, a template on steps, lots of arrows and a PowerPoint, and I will create […]
Avoid off-the-shelf leadership programmes. Pret-a-porter leadership development is attractive but unlikely to be a good solution. There are no universal […]
As Woody Allen said, showing up is 80% of life. The bookshelves, digital or otherwise, are full of ‘How-To-Succeed-In’ stuff. […]
What would be wrong with buying gazelles in the first place? The answer I hear sometimes is, ‘Well, the market […]
The following line will short cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, start-up get-to-know, redeployment of […]
I shared yesterday three types of employees I want for the modern organization. Different characters on the payroll. If there […]
My ideal modern organization has different characters on the payroll. If there is a payroll. These are three of them: […]
I review my 20 rules of Leadership every few months. I have published this list regularly in my Daily Thoughts. […]
Philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) requested before his death that the collection of his writings be called ‘paths, not works’. He […]
The secret of success revealed: it’s hard work! There you are. Now mix it with healthy ambition. And now make […]
The job description is dead. It is replaced by a Lego box, no instruction manual or a map. Welcome to […]
My third framing comment, after (1) framing new behaviours, and (2) the framing of the overall narrative of the organization, […]
Back in June, I said that I would put framing at the top of the list on ‘leadership tasks’. I […]
Some time ago a picture of a pack of wolves walking in the snow had been circulating on many social […]
In any organization there are positive deviants (deviants from expected norms, who achieve results) and other ‘statistical abnormalities’ by nature […]
My local DIY/Bricolage/Hardware store has terrible service. But now, by adopting a tradition started by Walmart (a tradition which is […]
There was a time, not long ago, when people got fed up with ‘change programmes’ that faded at the speed […]
Four types: The generosity of the traffic light. Every fixed interval, it lets you get through. It even changes colour […]
There are many compilations but I found these examples in distractify.com. These are cases of rejection that should make us […]
Business organizations have grown in a traditional alpha male model where emotions are weaknesses, irrationality is banned and ‘the human […]
We need to improve communication is not the same as, this is what we need to do to improve communication, […]
There are three major sources of trust generation. Everything else is commentary: The ‘keep promises’. I can rely on you, […]
The following are not the same: What you want to measure What you need to measure What you have been […]
If somebody could care to quantify the cost of constantly checking with people whether they are doing what they are […]
I owe this phrase to John Kerry whom I had the privilege of seeing on his London tour promoting his […]
There are many ways to introduce, trigger and spread behaviours in organizations, but not many of them are effective and […]
Organizations grow in many ways: organically and quietly, organically and exponentially, by acquisitions or mergers etc. In every step of […]
There are about 200 people in the organization. But 10 of them at the top are very powerful In fact, […]
I previously wrote about company cultures having a glue, The One Global Culture does not exist. But pretending that it […]
The so-called One Global Culture is a confederation of: (a) Geographical cultures and sub-cultures (Italy, USA, France etc) (b) Functional, […]
Ryan Holiday (media critic, stoicism vendor, marketing strategist) is ‘the bestselling author of Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a […]
The writer Nicholas Carr said about the influence of the Internet on the way he wrote and, in general, on his […]
Random thoughts: People content with average achievements in the market, launch a party when the statistics show a few points […]
Louis Gerstner, chairman of IBM from 1993 until 2002, recalls in his autobiography, the company’s use of a competence model […]
Memo to all functions and Business Partners (HR, OD, L&D, Internal/Corporate Communications, Strategy Units, Finance, Health and Safety, Branding/PR, and […]
We can do much better than this. But we don’t. On the contrary, we exploit these platitudes and repeat them […]
There is a romantic view of the organization that sees it completely borderless, inside and outside. Inside, this view says, […]
A good friend, an expert in Communications, has created her new website with a prominent quote of mine, ‘Change Management […]
These are us, you and me. OK, apologies for calling you ordinary. But it’s not disrespectful. Believe me. It’s like […]
Stage 1: The Accidental Management team. The team is composed by whoever reports to the top. You are in that […]
It could be argued that ‘silos’ are part of the human condition and group interaction, and Chris Rodgers (Informal Coalitions) […]
‘People like me’ is a category in its own right in the Edelman Trust Barometer. Multiple sets of data point […]
There are many ways to list our own assets. And that’s something that is very healthy to do. Practice it […]
The Communications function in organizations has still today one of the best chances to drive strategic change. To do this, […]
If leadership is a praxis, something that ‘I’ do (name and surname here, please), then, knowing a little bit about […]
At some people’s request, I am revising an old Daily Thoughts on ‘solidarity’ in the work place. Solidarity is one […]
There are two opposite and wrong reactions to Employee (engagement/satisfaction) surveys. At one end, there is the ‘ignore the findings’. […]
Passion is an emotion, or set of emotions. You may want, indeed, that your people are passionate, but you can’t […]
‘Let’s be real and aware of the current budget realities’ is a warning that leaders should give to their people […]
What about the leader as a designer of spaces, a social architect that creates places (physical) and spaces? Not hard […]
The England and Wales education authority has publicised a list of behaviours that will not be allowed in the classroom […]
Thomas Hylland Eriksen is a Norwegian Anthropology professor that has achieved more than any of his fellow anthropologists: you only […]
And the question is: ‘Why are you still here?’ You learn about the organization by asking questions to employees when […]
Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket one: Working conditions, Flexibility at work, Pay and perks, Reward and recognition, […]
A man is walking alongside the road with a bag of rice and throwing rice outside the road. Another man […]
Experiment. Not kidding. Once upon a time ‘experimenting’ was something that only scientists did. Most people would associate the word […]
The space of your Self is occupied. By you. This is good news and bad news. On one hand, you […]
1. They don’t read blogs entitled ‘5 things very successful leaders have in common’. 2. They don’t care about lists […]
Performance appraisal or performance management are one thing. Forced ranking into an artificial normal distribution of people in the organization, […]
This is my alternative to the Gallup 12. You can develop a whole Organizational Development philosophy around these questions. These […]
Only when you see Performance Management as rituals, you can understand why we still do them in the same unchanged […]
Structural answers to organizational problems are very unlikely to succeed. Division A people don’t collaborate with Division B people, so […]
Many organizations have a Risk Management function of some sort. Often scattered amongst different constituencies: manufacturing, engineering, R&D etc. It […]
OK, at least you’re reading. Thanks. The organization is a network. Networks have emergent properties. Translation: things come up from […]
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 […]
Clicktivism is a form of digital /online engagement that requires the extraordinary effort of one of your fingers, possibly the […]
A book by ex-Microsoft researcher and now MIT prof Kentaro Toyama (Geek Heresy, 20015) is not precisely novel on the topic of […]
An indepth analysis of the world of ‘Digital Transformation’ shows two things. One is that there is no such thing […]
Big L, small l, legacy is the long term outcome of leadership. There will be legacy. You’re better off shaping […]
Model 1. The technology, for example in the form of digital platforms such as Enterprise Social Networks, ESN (Yammer type) […]
If you want to learn from biographies of leaders, from their inspirations, about their traits, maybe tricks, read about Lincoln, […]
We all live and work in bureaucratic organizations. The differences between us is the dose. In today’s world, bureaucracy is […]
At a conference I attended, the very sharp mind of Marten Mickos, CEO of HackerOne, ex HP, ex Nokia, reminded […]
How do people change their mind? How can we influence people to change their minds? Well, any of us will […]
Following on from one of the topics discussed during yesterday’s thought-provoking webinar on The Myths of Management – leadership and […]
In our world of management, and in terms of understanding how we mobilize people at scale, we are always behind […]
Three bad news people: People who sell discontent. They become experts. You may have an entire internal sales force of […]
I know it will happen. I’m certain. It’s nothing to do with trust. Trust requires uncertainty. I trust […]
Mastering healthy tension between them, or surrendering to an ‘impossible alignment’ is a choice for leaders and managers. The worse […]
There is something only you can live: your life. Socrates said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. Being […]
I was told, many years ago, by somebody very close to the old Microsoft management, in Bill Gates times, that […]
The Good Mechanics of Continuous Improvement have given us a culture of feedback. Feedback is worshipped. There is a whole […]
Imagine this situation, which I am sure you have never come across. Just kidding. A ‘project’ (not necessarily defined as […]
If you were to list your most important people assets, above the best set of skills and competences, above the […]
A CEO asked me recently: what do you do with a manager who does not embrace or support change, in […]
Extracts taken from my book The Flipping Point. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs to […]
I’ve written several times about the tired distinction between management and leadership. It had its logic and purpose, and made […]
The great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote about the early 20th Century Spanish society as being ‘led by people who […]
Continuous culture shaping within an organization equals social movement: large scale behavioural and cultural change, for a purpose, powered by […]
Some organizations that are very good at (external) marketing, are terrible at internal. Grand market(ing) plans, but can’t sell a […]
Bottom up is not more (of the same) workshops but at the bottom of the organization. Changing the geography of […]
Culture is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can host the most beautiful and sophisticated developments, enhance people’s life, […]
I suggest we aim at a package of shifts in organizational life: a 10 point manifesto, the Remarkable Organization Manifesto […]
In my dealings with organizations of many sizes and shapes, cultures and geographies, I always find very fine individuals of […]
Your linguistic and behavioural frame must be in sync. Story, values and behaviours need to be solid and well connected. […]
I sometimes think that many global ‘one company’ initiatives are missing the point. The intentions are good: ‘look, we are […]
Winston Churchill said, referring to the Houses of Parliament in the UK, ‘We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us’. […]
Here are my top five from my organizational consulting work. The paraphrasing is mine, the ownership is shared with my […]
Some organizations, or groups inside the organization, suffer from lack of self belief. You could say weak self esteem. The […]
I believe that one of the fundamental types of leadership in this Century is Backstage Leadership™. This is the art […]
Peer power: if managers say, ‘safety is first’, the impact may be relative. The dictation is totally expected. This is […]
The snap shot of the company as pictured in an organizational chart, is probably one of the most fictitious works […]
Our traditional management education has almost 100% focused on the formal organization, the structural fabric of teams, divisions, groups, committees […]
The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]
Increasing the connectivity of people, who will benefit from enhanced collaboration, to achieve good things better, faster, differently, is a […]
In an experiment by Nicholas Christakis‘ team they tested the power of Artificial intelligence (AI) led bots (read pieces of […]
We have made character, virtue or goodness uncomfortable terms in the organization. They seem to provoke some sort of red […]
Audiences receive messages, whether at your Town Hall meeting or your keynote speech. Communities use what they have ‘in common’ […]
I don’t know where this quote comes from, but I have always seen it as a source of reflection on […]
Scientism is taking over management, so anything that can be expressed in scores and numbers is glorified regardless of the […]
Alternative title: A plan longer than six months to see initial success, is not worth the money. I suppose the […]
By all means, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ (by the way, Gandhi never said that), […]
These are the symptoms. Indicators, red flags, culture makers. If you have more than 5, you are in trouble. 6 […]
Reflective leadership has gone into progressive short supply. In an era where prescriptive answers seem to dominate reflective ones, it […]
‘Lasting capacity’ must be a keyword for change management and its methods. The issue today is less about how to […]
Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas […]
Deprogramming is a form of management detox. We navigate and work in organizations with a great deal of automatic pilot, […]
Culture is the difference between 30 people making a decision in 30 days, and 3 people making the same decision […]
I put framing at the top of the list on ‘leadership tasks’. One of those non-rocket sciences around us that […]
Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]
A while ago, a telecom client complained to me about his particular division which seemed to work entirely ‘on relationships’. […]
Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs […]
Our concept of organizational culture as a receptacle for values, beliefs, attitudes, mindsets, ways of doing, written rules, unwritten rules, […]
Renounce adaptation, robustness and even ‘flexibility’ in favour of ‘taking any opportunity to do things you think you could not […]
Some leaders are very good in a crisis. They may or may not acknowledge that, but the adrenaline of the […]
Extract taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas […]
The Four readiness drivers I have mentioned in previous posts are: Rapid Reaction and Reconfiguration (RRR) Focus on your ‘social […]
An interview with Adam Pisoni, American entrepreneur and previously, co-founder of CTO and Yammer, brings back to my table the […]
The word ‘ready’ has at least 4 meanings in any dictionary: 1. Prepared or available for service, action, or progress. […]
This is the famous quote by Rahm Emanuel, who was mayor of Chicago from 2011 to 2019, and before that […]
Nassim Taleb Antifragile concept is perhaps one of the most attractive frames (conceptual, philosophical, practical) we have had recently. By […]
Parachuting in help is daily life in the leadership of organizations. It may take the form of sending leaders from […]
Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile book has this subtitle: ‘Things that gain from disorder’. This is a model for the new organization […]
[1] When on the road going back to normal, with catching up in mind, as if trying to find the […]
I miss the sight of the very important people, the super-men and super-women of the British Airways business lounge in […]
I don’t know about you, but I have used the expression ‘in the grand scheme of things’ many times in […]
Nassim Taleb has written about ‘antifragile’ as the quality of ‘growing from disorder’. He says that the opposite to fragile […]
Spot the difference at the dinner party or barbeque. So, what do you do Joe? [You must start with ‘so’ […]
Consistently attributed to physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who had no time for sloppy thinking, ‘not even wrong’ has become a category […]
If you work in a corporation with headquarters and affiliates, scattered in many places, or with international sites, you will […]
Interrogated by a journalist: ‘Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?’, Mr Gandhi answered: ‘I think that it […]
Many organizations seem to run layers of parallel initiatives, all directed at noble goals, and in many cases, without talking […]
The traditional thinking about divisional and functional structures within organizations, which were born of the need for specialization and a […]
Cost cutting, cutting to the bone, cutting resources down to the bare minimum is praised as efficient. But it’s not. […]
I am your customer, you are my customer. When I need to provide you with something, you are my customer. […]
A while ago, my brand new iPhone was stolen at the airport, having left it behind on a table for […]
“Where there is no vision, the people perish”, says the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. This quote comes in […]
Way number 1: My team has come up with these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you […]
Readers of my books and clients will be aware that I am not very fond of 360 degree feedback used […]
The trouble with consensus is that it contains all the risks of poor thinking and all the possible cognitive biases, […]
‘The exercise was very rich, everybody participated deeply, the walls were full of flipcharts with stuff. So many ideas floating […]
Some people have a hero within. They have this tremendous ability to mobilise energy, jump in when big issues present, […]
If you look at political marketing, and the place to look for a serious PhD in communications and their segmentation […]
Discovering’ an old article that I wrote years ago, when I used to have a management column in a monthly […]
With the best of intentions, to call an organization a Democracy is an abuse of the term, unless of course, […]
Vocation is often defined as ‘a strong feeling’ to do something, a job, a career, an occupation, to dedicate one’s […]
Chinese proverb that is, what else? I wish we could be as crystal clear when it comes to the characteristics […]
Working in a ‘non-place place’ can’t deliver inspirations and aspirations. Ideas need infections, not Clinical Isolation Units. Marc Auge is […]
Organizational anthropology sounds like a grandiose academic affair. You may imagine the anthropologists armed with notebooks and cameras capturing the […]
‘Science advances by a series of funerals’. This is how John Brockman, founder of The Edge, and editor of a […]
There is so much to fix and manage inside the organization that the task could be never ending. Soon, and […]
‘Change management’ usually forgets a vital component: the things that don’t change or need to change, or, indeed, must not […]
I shared yesterday the tragedy of the obvious. The obvious that is so obvious that we don’t see it. Read […]
A man was leading a caravan of donkeys and crossing the border almost every day, coming back with apparently the […]
Employee empowerment is an output, an outcome. If you start thinking of employee empowerment as an input, something you are […]
You are stuck when confronted with dilemmas. Maybe contradictory business decisions, or maybe the need to choose between two evils. […]
Business loves inspirational stories. The world of entrepreneurship and leadership constantly draw on stories. Many people love sports analogies. Some […]
The great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote about the early 20th Century Spanish society as being ‘led by […]
There is a big difference between copying and reverse engineering. Many people in business wish they could copy the great […]
This is an anthropology report. We’ve found this tribe: the people all wear the same multi-coloured clothes. They paint their […]
I have always been a bit wary of people who repeatedly define themselves by what they are against. It makes […]
I am of course paraphrasing Mario Cuomo’s ‘You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose’. Cuomo (1932-2015) was an American […]
Friends, my heart is broken today. The UK is leaving the European Union tonight at 11:00 pm continental time. Many […]
Some organisations, or groups inside the organisation, suffer from lack of self belief. You could say weak self esteem. The […]
Arriving at the clean and clinical Stockholm airport, my pre-booked taxi is failing me. I have some time to spare […]
If you had to build an organization from scratch, or re-design one, you would have options about some models to […]
There are times when you get stuck in arguments. Discussions seem to go nowhere. You are running in circles and […]
Crisis are/constitute inflection points. Also M&A, extraordinary organic growth, relocations, and entering new markets. Keep adding. Pain is inevitable, misery […]
The traditional organization is, amongst other things, obsessed with closure. It despises ambiguity and puts a premium on the absolute […]
Einstein said, “I soon learned to scent out what was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from […]
Nasim Taleb’s Antifragile book has this subtitle: ‘Things that gain from disorder’. This is a model for the new organization […]
The concept of disruption in management has been applied to innovation before. A disruptive innovation is a technology, process or […]
There is a ‘meeting expectations’ cult in business. It has created its own concept of (customer) services: meet customer expectations, […]
The company is too big to change. We are too small to compete. It’s too early for a Leadership Development. […]
One aspect of my work with organizations that I truly enjoy is to help craft the ‘Behavioural DNA’ that shapes […]
A meeting room without a flipchart is decaffeinated coffee. The absence of a flipchart insinuates possibly lots of talking, perhaps […]
Surprise is a powerful strategy in its own right. Surprise means being ahead of the game, being further ahead than […]
The closest thing to designing and building an organization is the designing and building a house. You can build a […]
Amongst my clients I have a good representation of ‘regulated industries’ such as pharmaceuticals and financial services. I, myself, spent […]
You have bought a pair of very expensive tickets for a classical music concert but the traffic is horrible and […]
Managers are good at messaging and communicating. OK, this is a benevolent assessment but let’s assume this. Also, OK at […]
This is scene one of ‘The Tragedy of Coriolanus’ by William Shakespeare. It says a lot to us. It’s easy […]
‘When the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’ If you have a predetermined view […]
The Business English language (yes, there is one) uses the word ‘accountability’ often associated to the word ‘taking’, as in […]
Continuing with thoughts on critical thinking…. ‘Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then […]
Meeting expectations, exceeding expectations and all that jazz! It’s often said that success equals performance minus expectations. Three comments on […]
These are ‘functions’ and ‘structures’ in need of spaces in the organization. You may not be brave enough, or crazy […]
Many of us spend quite a lot of our time in what we call ‘work’. The business day now has […]
The degree of comfort in discovering the roots of things, cannot be taken as proof of the truth. The best […]
Is this what people want? Singing along with what the Big Gurus have provided? Music and lyrics? Sometimes I feel […]
We spend too much time seeking predictable answers. They are not necessarily bad. If I work with Peter, Paul and […]
To think out of the box, one has to recognise first that there is a box. Therefore one has to […]
Benchmarking is a rear-mirror strategy. It’s about catching up with something that has already happened. People who spend too much […]
The hour has come. Radical is the word. From the Latin, radix, it means root. We need to get to […]
If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ into the water […]
Many years ago, I got into Decision Analysis at the hands of my good friend Larry Philips of the London […]
Many years ago, I learnt from the UNHCR, the UN refugee Agency based in Denmark, that many global NGOs of […]
Management cultures, particularly Anglo Saxon, love acronyms. This is something new employees need to learn. If coming from another industry, […]
There are always people who ‘don’t get it’, are against cultural change efforts, do not support a programme, torpedo it, […]
The Great Man Theory was born in Scotland, the child of philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 –1881) – “The […]
Back in 1994, Jim Collins, consultant and author, gained a lot of attention with his book Built To Last: Successful […]
Nuccio Ordine, an Italian professor, has written an essay of this title, to my knowledge not translated into English. It […]
A while ago, I was told an anecdote about an MBA student who returned to their alma mater for a […]
List your competitors, then, compare yourself with a different list. Most of the answers lie outside your immediate peer circle. […]
These are the 10 strategic options you have at your disposal all the time, as I use them with my […]
The perfect state of a healthy organization is unfinished. Like a human being. ‘Born too early’ (Campbell’s hero). Finished structures […]
It should not surprise us that people are constantly looking for the magic bullet of leadership. What makes a good […]
“The history of mankind might be described by a cynic as a series of splendid expeditions towards the wrong goal […]
This quote is from an unknown author. He or she must have known a thing or two about the futility […]
I call Collective Leadership that state in the evolution of management teams or leadership teams when the power of the […]
As Mark Twain said himself, ‘The death of the charismatic leader has been grossly exaggerated’. The problem is that ‘charisma’ […]
Today, there are more similarities between a teenager in Shanghai and a teenager in Rome, or Singapore and Madrid, or […]
Behavioural /cultural shaping in organizations does not scale up by simply the leaders having the right mindset and motivation. A […]
Many times in my consulting work, I find myself facing this dilemma. Do I involve many people on the client’s […]
In Latin ‘Post hoc ergo propter hoc’. Free translation: B follows A, so A must be the cause of B. […]
Innovation and renewal requires your windows open to the world. Plenty of organizations out there are experimenting with models, far […]
We spend more time on preparing for doing than in doing. That would be good if we were just talking […]
Medium and big organizations tend to use a competence system that segments people by grades and by degree of competence. […]
I am paraphrasing British philosopher Simon Blackburn who said the same about scientists entering the temple of philosophy. There is […]
There was a time when the logic of things started with a ‘why’, followed with a ‘what’ and ended in […]
There is a period in child development when children start asking the question ’why?’. They usually seem unsatisfied with one […]
Clicktivism is the term used to describe the type of pseudo-activism that consists in clicking the ‘Like’ button (Facebook mainly) […]
Back in June 2016, people could walk over floating piers on Lake Iseo (Italy), all covered with yellow material, one […]
If you have a behaviour/value system and you want to recruit people in a way that this value system is […]
Let me share with you my 3Ss, where I suggest you put your money: 1. Synthesis. My followers, readers, clients, […]
New units: Certificate of existence = 280 characters (Twitter) Presentation of ideas, maximum attention span = 18 mins (TED) Digital […]
One of the very frequent questions that I ask my clients is what they can stop doing so that they […]
A social movement is not a bunch of people, even hundreds, or thousands, moving socially. A social movement needs a […]
“A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.”—Fred Ross Fred Ross (1910-1992) American community […]
This phrase is attributed to the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who also described some arguments or theories as so bad that […]
Some organizations are little versions of Dante’s Inferno with its sign ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’ at the […]
So you have The Process and The Outcome dating. You would have thought that they are having a good time. […]
Consistently over the years, the Edelman’s Trust Barometer has told us that the greatest source of trust inside the organization […]
In a massive street demonstration for Anti Something Big, you have the Anti Something Big activists, the Anti Everything, the […]
I explained to a client the logic and principles of the Viral Change™ Platform. I did not want to sell […]
Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]
Modern and not so modern ‘social movements’ with or a without business propositions are portrayed as a concerted and positioned […]
Change management, or management of change. Thank God there can only be two permutations, because they are the most over-used […]
Said Wittgenstein. Language in business and organizations creates frames, but also limitations. And we have lots of these frames. ‘Employee […]
Months ago, I found myself in front of a large audience composed of the highest ranks of the HR function […]
(1) If the top leadership of the company doesn’t exhibit the values/behaviours that you want to instill in the culture, […]
Is LinkedIn a Digital Rolodex? A digital Resume/CV Library? Do you connect with people who have already given you the […]
The historical existence of several layers of management in any organization may be related to its size. In a command […]
I must confess I have never been 100% comfortable with the traditional distinction by Warren Bennis between leaders and managers […]
There is an ‘Accidental Literature for Leaders’. I call this my compilation of poems or pieces of narrative that are […]
Moses’ leadership was bad. He promised his people a land of milk and honey. Instead, they got a terrible hike […]
Many people, many of them in high managerial positions, succeed by avoiding failure. They become unmemorable by design. A new […]
One of the biggest compliments I’ve received in my consulting life, and one that I have come to appreciate more […]
It’s called the Shirky principle, after Clay Shirky, prolific American author of bestsellers such as ‘Here comes everybody’(2008) and ‘Cognitive […]
The war on talent. McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what seemed […]
A specialist nephrologist I know well says to me: I get very nervous with all this heart stuff, I don’t […]
Management Theory (if there is one) and management practice are not physics. We don’t have very solid data about what […]
There was this big conference that was introduced by the chairman in this way: ‘Welcome everybody. Lovely to have you […]
‘Prioritize’ is a word that I particularly dislike because it is overused and misused in a terrible way. I have […]
No system can be fully understood within the system. No, this is not an esoteric statement but a simple, common […]
A neighbourhood with broken windows and graffiti on the walls says: look how easy it is to break a window […]
I know of a brilliant medical doctor who, in front of a worried patient, perhaps with some imaginary worries, perhaps […]
In a study conducted with Fortune 100 companies, and quoted in Sherry Turkle’s book ‘Reclaiming Conversations’, the following statistics about […]
That was Nietzsche on change management! It goes to the core of the issue of how we all try to […]
Here we go. I’m sounding a little gloomy for a Monday morning. I don’t mean to. Promise. Back in 2016 […]
It is unrealistic to expect upside down disruptive innovation in any business. But the absence of disruptive thinking may be […]
Jerry B Harvey’s 1974 article “The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement’, contains this vignette. On a hot afternoon visiting […]
With some exceptions, there is no such a thing as single, global, monolithic corporate culture. There is usually a confederation […]
1. Postpone. Some great killers postpone everything. They don’t even have to use the language, they simply organise things in […]
Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ‘Faster horses strategies’ […]
Leadership has traditional sources of learning, reflection, role modelling and a ‘body of knowledge’. There are four that dominate. This […]
It’s impossible to listen in a noisy room. If you want to listen to your breathing, you need silence. You […]
Emotional Intelligence was a paragraph-length concept expressed in a library of publications. At the time it was a shock in […]
William Stafford’s (1914 – 1993) poem reads: The things you do not have to say make you rich, Saying the […]
‘A year from now, you are all here standing in front of the CEO and you say: we screwed up! […]
Powerful oversimplifications’ was the term used by Bruce Henderson, founder of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to define the matrixes, […]
Communicating, triggering behaviours, sustaining them and creating a culture, are all connected, interdependent, overlapping and parts of the chain of […]
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that […]
In caricature, this is a 3 point strategy to develop further. It’s a simple mental and practical frame. Build an […]
10 key behavioural competences of people to understand what is going on. Small sample of my collection. These are 10 […]
Each large or not that large organization needs one. This tribe is composed of people who have a natural ability […]
Organizations need a Rapid Reaction Force. OK, unless you are in the military, it does not mean military fatigue uniforms […]
Some people in organizations believe that they are working in a very bureaucratic, hierarchical, political and rigid environment. Many of […]
From time to time you see the occasional and mostly not very solid comparisons between ‘the company’ and a religion. […]
The language of leadership is often plain and monotone. Used to explain slides and with a screen behind, leadership language […]
We all have our share of ‘difficult people’. Conventional management of change has taught us that there is always going […]
Feeling trapped, is at the core of some aspects of one’s mental health, and also organizational distress. The deep awareness […]
What should employees be loyal to? Ask an average leader: to the company, of course. Loyalty may be disguised. It […]
In my organizational consulting work, and in behavioural terms, I am very used to be told, and challenged, that there […]
I said yesterday that for large scale mobilization of people (AKA social movements, AKA company culture), it needs a platform. […]
I wish I could remember where I did read these stats. Russia under the Tsar 1914-1917…had 180 million peasants and […]
In the era of digital semi anonymity, personal contact wins. In the era of corporate email broadcasting, personal contact wins. […]
Whether in society or inside the organization, we have plenty of ‘theories of change’ surprisingly unchallenged. Can we please look […]
Grandiose plans get sabotaged by small things. Many years ago, I was involved in what was going to be a […]
The new, emerging organizations, many people would agree, are more collaborative, more leadership-distributed, less top-down, with more levels of empowerment […]
These two statements represent a form of magical thinking of the kind seen in ancient humans (clouds) and todays humans […]
Many clients have expressed this thought over the years: ‘Leandro, we are so good at crisis!’ And indeed they were! […]
I owe this to Nassim Taleb (‘Fooled by Randomness’ (2007), ‘The Black Swan’ (2008), ‘Antifragile’ (2013). As a traveller of many years […]
In my experience, people can understand budget cuts, but there are several types of acceptance, leading to several levels of […]
I can’t remember where I saw this. This is part of the point. It could have been anywhere. But I […]
A recent senior hire in a client company commented to me that the thing that most impressed her in the […]
Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and psychologist, Oxford professor, has formulated that 150 was the “cognitive limit to the number of […]
There is evidence, intelligently articulated by Phil Rosenzweig in 2007 (The Halo Effect), that a series of measures of employee […]
There must be a better way than having 200 consultants landing in my company and doing the stuff for me, […]
I have explored this theme before in my Daily Thoughts, but I feel compelled to go back! Behavioural issues, whether […]
What type are you? How our mental models work is part of the Minimal Introspection, something we tend to overlook, […]
Whilst the holidays roll on, here is a leadership theme to consider Picture this organization. Closed culture, culture of secrecy, […]
Good Morning! The following article extends on our recent series on leadership this week. In the book by Gary Hamel […]
Good Morning! Here is the last of our series of three on Leadership this week. Recently, I keep finding myself […]
‘Lack of communication’ or ‘a communication problem’, is perhaps number one declared culprit in most of our troubled organizational life. […]
Morning to you. Here is my second post in a series of three on Leadership: Don’t define leadership for me. […]
We praise people because of their ‘clarity of mind’. We say, ‘she is a good manager, she knows what she […]
Continuing my revised 12 laws of social change at a scale. Very simple laws apply to any large scale change […]
Our faith in communication is enormous. Why? Perhaps because we know well the problems associated with the lack of communication. […]
Years ago I was talking to a client, a Senior VP in the company, about a project that had to […]
This week, I offered 10 types of people that challenge the status quo in organizations. I also mentioned that our […]
Who challenges in organizations? People who have nothing to lose People who know that the art of challenging, equals not […]
Often you see people in organizations disillusioned with changes, considering themselves survivors of the yet another reorg, getting on with […]
The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person […]
Forget work-life balance. It was a good concept that did a lot of good but has now retired. It cannot […]
Perhaps the best we can do for the next generations is to understand their dreams. They are not the same […]
We need teaming up, but we may not need more teams. We need role-modelling but may not need to call […]
Let’s revisit re-framing techniques. I covered this in a previous Daily Thought but still relevant today. Take a look at […]
It’s 2019 – I wanted to revisit this from 2018 – are corporations developing, evolving, transforming, adapting….? And old sticker […]
A simple exercise that leaders can do, either on their own with paper and pen, or with their management team, […]
A ‘Daily Thought’ taken from one of my Leadership series’. Gold leadership, is the one above silver and bronze, that’s […]
One of the key rules of activism (social, political, cause) is not to spend more than the minimum necessary time […]
Something for the weekend. Written back in 2017 but still rings true today! We naturally retreat to comfort zones. If […]
Another important idea (first published in 2016) worth revisiting. Enjoy! You can’t inject happiness in the organization. You can’t put […]
A previously posted Daily Thought – well-worth revisiting. John Le Carre, British ex secret intelligence serviceman, espionage writer, dixit. He […]
The formidable Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy (who declares that has ‘an attractively vague job title which has allowed […]
On one side, taxes are good, big government, social welfare, fighting for social justice and social mobility, human rights, women […]
Standard Operating Procedures, strategy documents, all normal process and systems and the organization chart are the headlines. If you really […]
It is counterintuitive to managers but not to cognitive scientists. Given airtime to an issue is not always a good […]
A few days ago, I went to a conference. It’s unusual for me these days because I have close to […]
The Good Mechanics of Continuous Improvement have given us a culture of feed-back. Feed back is worshiped. There is a […]
Sorry for the medicalization, an annoying legacy in my brain from many years of diagnosing and prescribing. Unlike many other […]
It’s terrifying. You are in front of an inquisitorial crowd, maybe your own people, and have to say, I don’t […]
I don’t know anything about boilers. Only that they are prone to take sabbaticals and stop delivering. In many cases […]
I published this ages ago. Some people have asked me to repeat… since the robots are still coming and apparently […]
We can measure anything. Vital things, rubbish things, relevant, secondary, soft, hard, anything. We have been told by the Wise […]
What is authenticity? For starters, a very nice word. One of these that we love to attach as a command: […]
First published in September 2018. An American educator said that children entered school as a question mark and left school […]
First published in August 2018. We are used to look at the cost of doing things. And rightly so. We […]
First posted back in January. Most of our organizational problems are behavioural. Structural answers hardly solve behavioural problems. Amalgamating A […]
First published in November 2018 If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for more […]
Socrates said. Or Plato said Socrates said. Socrates never wrote a word. He did not trust them. They were the […]
This is a question always tempting leaders to give an answer. Eager to show that people will benefit, we spend […]
My mind is not for change. Look how strong I am. In the Brexit context, the discussion has often been […]
Space to reflect? Where is that? Are you saying we are not reflective? Don’t we have an intelligence? Are you […]
I know leaders who are obsessed with this: the systematic use of feed back between managers and staff, between people. […]
(the series on Employee Engagement will continue later) Organizational dynamics are full of ‘default thinking’. We assume that some things […]
Over the next 7 days, we wanted to revist a series of posts from 2017, exploring the important topic of […]
In yet another experiment by Nicholas Christakis team (see previous Daily Thought on mistakes by robots!) they tested the power […]
Being open about mistakes, own mistakes, team mistakes, has always being considered a driver for trust. If I as leader […]
First published October 2018 If you love KPIs, here is one. The attractiveness of your (corporate) function is defined by […]
First published back in 2016 Plato told us in his Symposium that humans were originally androgynous, not men or women. […]
First published in November 2017. This is the request we make at the beginning of a Viral Change™ programme. Forget […]
First published September 2018 Also called get out of the room and don’t interfere. Also asking the question ‘may I […]
First published back in November 2018. If one thing has become clear after all these decades of management soul-searching for […]
Don’t look at us, at the leadership at the top. We are the wrong mirror. Of course, we are committed […]
Every year I review the version of this list and share with my community. Here is again, 2019 mode, with […]
The unwritten rules of the organization tell you more about its culture than all powerpoionts of its leadership programmes. The […]
There are many versions of the same principle. We spend disproportionate amounts of time on issues. We often have deep […]
David Brooks, columnist of the New York Times and author (too conservative for the liberals and too liberal for the […]
Organizational life can go on, driven by management, without asking people about their motivations. These are assumed in a rather […]
Bottom-up is not more (of the same) workshops but at the bottom of the organization. Changing the geography of top-down […]
The ‘critical mass’ concept, as the number of people required to move forward, to change collective behaviours, to see a […]
The Free Rider problem is studied in social sciences and refers to people who benefit from a collective (mainly public) […]
Increasing the connectivity of people, who will benefit from enhanced collaboration ,to achieve good things better, faster, differently, is a […]
I don’t know where this comes from but it’s in posts and posters all over. It’s perhaps one of these […]
People reading these Daily Thoughts may be used to common themes, indeed. After all, I am not writing about nuclear […]
And employee characters, and company culture, and all the unwritten rules of the organization are shaped in the cafeteria, the […]
Given our growing impatience and limited attention span (our minds are overheated in the filtering of information, like traffic control […]
Suddenly purpose is back. We are told that Millennials want purpose. Which may be true. As much as many other […]
Attention Chief Transformation Officers, Offices of Transformation, Change Management Units, and Change Offices, and Projects of Future A,B,C,. Units of […]
The full quote: ‘Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to […]
Yesterday, my wife and I said goodbye to a good friend from France who works as a high level executive […]
Wisdom Nomads go form meeting to meeting. ‘We need to make sure that’, ‘we have to know how this fits […]
Behavioural change is still presented in many quarters with the same language as installing a piece of software. Or maybe […]
Most of our organizational problems are behavioural Structural answers hardly solve behavioural problems. Amalgamating A and B because A and […]
I was used to the concept of catastrophic failure, but not catastrophic success, until I read an article in the […]
Hello from The Chalfont Project Daily Thoughts is in pause mode until the New Year. You can still browse and […]
Some organizations seem to have a love affair with problems. They love their disruptive and furtive nature. Secret encounters in […]
I could not sleep, it was almost unbearable. Then I woke up and the weather was horrible. The traffic was […]
Culture is the difference between 30 people making a decision in 30 days, and 3 people making the same […]
For as long as anybody can remember in management history, the team has been highlighted as the unquestionable form of […]
Reposting a favourite from back in April 2017. Enjoy! One of the most toxic practices in organizational life is equating […]
The author Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a most interesting book about the Lincoln presidency: ‘Team of Rivals’. It says it […]
One of the fundamental roles of leadership is to frame the narrative of the organization. This is easy to say […]
I am back to one of my favourites: measuring value. One of my oldest Daily Thoughts told this story. A […]
It’s a typical saying in US politics and I suspect in many other places. It’s a powerful thought. Every day […]
Allow yourself to be a bit inefficient Reinvent some wheels from time to time Don’t always reuse the same presentation […]
Deprogramming is a form of management detox. We navigate and work in organizations with a great deal of automatic pilot […]
The cult of Employee Satisfaction surveys is fading. Companies are doing less or less frequent. Perhaps there is some tiredness. […]
Says Barbara Webb, professor of Biorobotics, who tries to simulate living organisms behaviours and extrapolate form here. It sounds like […]
Your son’s teacher says: your son John does not hand in the homework on time, quality is poor, we don’t […]
At a recent conference, one of the speakers explained his recent experience in a building materials, large shop where he […]
As with many modern clever quotes, there is more than one author claiming this. Symptoms of potentially ‘all fools in […]
Multinational companies are values and behaviours schools. It may not be in their mission and vision, in the job descriptions […]
If you love KPIs, here is one. The attractiveness of your (corporate) function is defined by the number of people […]
Two years ago, starting in the Midwest of Ireland, a bottom up social movement, ‘Values in Action’, started to shape […]
This has become a mantra used by many leaders to express the desire that people take seriously their commitments ‘as […]
Some organizations are breathless. Frantic. It could be good or bad, usually not too good. Other organizations are like funerary […]
Malaria is not an increase of temperature in the thermometer Employee engagement is not a score in a Gallup scale […]
For many non-American, non-Anglo-saxon organizations the idea of fun is ‘that American thing’. It’s a bit unfair and reductionistic. I […]
The recent launch of the “Mobilize!” Masterclass has led to much discussion about Social Movements here at Daily Thoughts HQ. […]
These rules apply whether you are an external partner or an internal one. Rule number 1. Resistance is never universal. […]
Do you understand the strategy? Yes Can you see why we need to change, to do anything? Yes Do you […]
Semi connected reflections: [1] We talk a lot, email a lot, reply a lot, post a lot, say ‘I agree […]
A friend of mine Carlos Orozco uses this analogy. If you are driving a car and you have a puncture, […]
Airtime is finite. Initiatives, activities, tasks, ideas, attention to people, reaching the boss, innovation discussions, programmes, change programmes, leadership programmes, […]
In the previous Daily Thoughts I suggested: Readiness is a red herring and usually an alibi for not starting something […]
[1] January starts around the 10th of the month. February is shorter and boring. Unless you go skiing, which half […]
An American educator said that children entered school as a question mark and left school as a full stop. I […]
‘Smoking kills’, or ‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ or ‘Get the Flu Vaccine’ are wonderful attempts to warn your fellow citizens […]
Many years ago companies started to say ‘we are organized in project teams’. Professional projectization was the thing. Until it […]
This is an unwritten rule in US presidential elections and a line in a witty and fascinating book by Dan […]
From The Chalfont Project, UK office: Dear all. Dr Leandro Herrero has produced a 5 hour masterclass divided into 28 […]
Also called get out of the room and don’t interfere. Also asking the question ‘may I be, perhaps, actually, the […]
Our thinking is far from rational. What’s new? Perhaps ‘making a rational decision’ should be reframed as ‘making a decision […]
A headline in a newspaper on the 9th of August 2018 red ‘Deutsche Bank Cuts Again. Not Even Fruit Bowls […]
‘To tell you the truth’ is an opening in English conversation. Other similar are ‘to be honest with you’, or […]
Co-benefit is a term broadly used in the Climate Change movement to explain the unintended/extended consequences of actions beyond an […]
Take a look at these 5 re-frames. You should see the differences not just the simple literary ones but the […]
And old sticker said This is a situation in which I find myself very often: Several corporate groups agree (vocally, […]
We need a revolution in business academia or it will become irrelevant. Apprenticeships are already far greater value than academic […]
We are used to looking at the cost of doing things. And rightly so. We ask those questions as a […]
And those which are maybe less dangerous than those who aren’t. In an old 2005 study, which findings are very […]
‘Work conquers all’, or ‘steady work overcomes all things’ Virgil dixit. For many, the time of post-break is approaching, if […]
Welcome to the last in our summer recap series. We hope you have enjoyed re-reading some of our favourite posts […]
The second of this week’s recap posts on Social Movements. Enjoy! Tribes in the organization: seeing the world in segments, […]
Normal service will be resuming shortly at Daily Thoughts HQ! But first, we wanted to share some of the best […]
Here is the third of our favourite posts on Leadership. Enjoy and have a great weekend! The ‘research’ for the […]
Here is the 2nd of this week’s revisited posts focused on Leadership… Three magic questions for leaders 1. Will I […]
Welcome to the third in our series of summer “Recaps”, this week focusing on Leadership. We hope you enjoy our […]
Here is the third of our favourite posts on Culture. Enjoy and have a great weekend! Grab the magic thresholds […]
The second of this week’s posts on Culture. Enjoy! Lazy managers love questionnaires No offence to questionnaires. They are legitimate […]
As Daily Thoughts is taking a short summer hiatus, this week we are sending you a few of our favourite […]
Here is this week’s final recap post looking at the Viral Change™ Mobilizing Platform. Have a great weekend! Networks have […]
Here is this week’s second “recap” post on the Viral Change™ Mobilizing Platform. Enjoy! Change management is dead. Let’s […]
Dear Readers, Daily Thoughts is taking a short holiday! But never fear, over the next few weeks we will be […]
In the old days of my parents, there was an unwritten consensus that your problems in life, your anxiety at […]
(A similar version of this post was released out of sync with it;’s part 1. Apologies for those who got […]
A glitch in the system made the publication of part 2 of this out of sync and was sent last […]
Teamocracy may be the worst form of people collaboration except for all those other forms that have been tried from […]
If you talk to my clients, they will tell you that I use cooking analogies all the time. Cook this, […]
Beloit College, in Wisconsin, creates every year a ‘Mindset List’ It shows a list of facts about a particular new […]
In October 2013, a ship carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. 300 people drowned. As The Guardian journalist Kenan […]
1. Will I regret not doing this? Bezos, Amazon chief. Here it is from a recent article: ‘When faced with […]
Friday 25 May, 2018. Ireland votes 66.4% in favour of repealing the Eight Amendment of its Constitution, inserted in 1983, […]
Today we are in front of daily wars of narratives: political, social, models of the world, futures, concept of Man. […]
For the last, at least, 10 years of my consulting life, I have struggled to confirm the thesis, well publicised […]
‘I welcome criticism’ is often an alibi to avoid criticism. OK, that’s as harsh as it goes for a generic. […]
Accustomed as we are to create plans to succeed on something, this may sound counterintuitive. Creating (serious) plans for failure […]
(1) We plan operations, change, leadership, anything, with intended consequences in mind. These are often translated into KPIs, milestones, and […]
George Lakoff, a familiar name in these Daily Thoughts, is on a mission. The US cognitive psychology specialist, emeritus professor, […]
I good friend, expert in Communications, has created her new website with a prominent quote of mine, ‘Change Management as […]
In this miniseries I have shared so far four inconvenient truths uncovered by the forensics of ‘change management’ failure: Too […]
Forth in the mini series: uncovering of truths of the failure of change and transformation programmes, via a reverse engineering. […]
Third installment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Finding: […]
Second installment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes. Many […]
This five part mini-series (!) is not glamourous. It tries to uncover some inconvenient truths via a reverse engineering of […]
Managing? Leading? Probably one of the worse dichotomies ever invented. Another day. Engaging? Motivating? Committing? Consider Mobilizing! It means…what it […]
I have held the view for many years that management is ‘by invitation’ (Disruptive Ideas, 2008). For example, I am […]
The word Pontifex (Pontiff in English) is the term associated with the Pope (twitter account…err.. @pontifex, what else?). I love […]
I have referred before to George Lakoff’s work and his little book ‘Don’t think of an elephant’, which makes the […]
F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of many who have described this, but his articulation is the one widely quoted: “The […]
The problem with super efficacy and super efficiency is that what works for a Swiss watch does not work for […]
Would you join a Facebok with 100 users? A Yammer with few entries? A Twitter where only a few tweets? […]
Learning from mistakes, make mistakes, learn, it’s OK, mistakes are OK, we are human, if we did not make mistakes […]
Toxic people. A sample. The top 12 to watch: The bully who is not challenged The bully who is not […]
Yesterday was International Receptionist Day. Perhaps it was buried in a myriad of International Days of Something. But the receptionist […]
Read. Take a deep breath. Read again. Keep breathing, think about this. ‘The system will prevent itself from solving the […]
I said yesterday that I would put framing at the top of the list on ‘leadership tasks’ I also said […]
I put framing at the top of the list on ‘leadership tasks’. One of those non-rocket-sciences around us that we […]
We never solve problems, we trade them off. The thought is not depressing. It is liberating because it means we […]
If you follow my Daily Thoughts you would know that I despise Employee Engagement as something that you need to […]
When my daughter was in primary school, I was invited by the teacher to give a presentation to small girls […]
No medium to large size company has a single culture. No medium to large size French, or British or American […]
Affinity, like-minded groupings and ‘we know each other very well’ works if what you want is to get things done, […]
An 18 year old paper in social anthropology by Marilyn Strathern (then at Cambridge) had the intriguing title of ‘The […]
Employee engagement is an outcome, not in input. You don’t inject engagement or engineer activities to engage. Those do exist. […]
I sometimes think that management thinking, management speak and management education (that includes ‘research’) makes everything possible to avoid critical […]
This is the last one in the series of 10 Organizational Pathologies, and the longest write up. Sorry! Bear with […]
Attributed to Peter Drucker, we have inherited the ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’. Drucker meant that you need […]
Almost there, two to go. I have posted one pathology per day (see the website) Busy-ness! From all organizational pathologies […]
Over inclusiveness paralysis occurs as a side effect of good intentions. The intentions are usually democratic, egalitarian, based on respect […]
Processes are supposed to provide these three things A sure and presumably tested path to address repetitive situations, so that […]
‘Postponing’ (AKA as procrastination) maybe healthy and reasonable, maybe not. Cultures are created by behaviours. The best predictors of behaviours […]
In medicine, autoimmune disease is one in which ‘the body produces antibodies that attack its own tissues, leading to the deterioration […]
Hierarchy is dead, proclaim people in the advanced, enlightened, guru-read organization. Hierarchy is bad, ugly, cause of all problems, constraining, […]
Communicate, communicate, communicate, we were told. All the problems go back to communication. This is your default culprit. In doubt, […]
Solutionism is a common condition in which the energy and airtime of the organization is consumed in finding solutions to […]
My ideal modern organization has different characters on the payroll. If there is a payroll. These are three of them […]
I have never found a client that says we don’t need evidence, or data, or facts, or hard measures. Most […]
I’ve learnt recently a new Mckinsean acronym: MECE (Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive). Meaning, you break ‘it’ all down in (Mutually […]
Ok, so you are back. I shared yesterday 5 shifts. Here are the other 5. As I said yesterday, Viral […]
Ok, if you insist, here it is. Commercial or not, it’s also true. I need to share with you […]
Ryan Holiday (media critic, stoicism vendor, marketing strategist) is ‘the best-selling author of Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a […]
Have you seen those videos, or TV interviews, or programmes, in which there is a disconnect between what the person […]
I must say I am getting very frustrated to see more and more companies which workforce seems to function as […]
Part 2 of 2 from yesterday’s ‘The (re)volution will be postponed. Once more’ Margaret Mead (anthropologist, 1901-1978) ‘Never doubt that a […]
The below is the equivalent of how in some organizations the so called ‘management of change’ or cultural transformation are […]
Did you fall in love after reading case studies and using benchmarking data? Did you see the Mona Lisa in […]
Maybe, just maybe, we don’t need ‘managers’ and ‘employees’, as in generals and troops. My strong bet is for a […]
Really? Recently I went to visit a specialist doctor in a private facility. Of course I was handed out a […]
For the record, you can measure anything, the relevant, the irrelevant, the crucial and the distractions. Measuring is not a […]
What if your unintended consequences were as big as the intended ones? This happens in our Viral Change™ programmes all […]
There was a time when ‘my tanks are bigger than yours’ was the so called competitive advantage. Bigger muscle, bigger […]
No offense to those with the title in the business card. No offense to the whole industry. You are well […]
When researching for my 2011 book Homo Imitans, I was interested in the human ability to copy from our environment. […]
When people join a company, coming from another one, they need to marry different worlds: The one of the company […]
No offense to questionnaires. These are legitimate tools to know what is going on! People may argue that in a […]
The ‘tyranny of knowledge’ is one of these phrases used in a diversity of contexts. It means amongst other things […]
There is a point in time in which the brain starts filtering the images coming in, all the lines written, […]
It’s been a while. Having a gap in the writing daily date helps to gain perspective. I went through a […]
Happy New Year! Daily Thoughts will be back in flow on the 1st of February During this gap, I have […]
It has been an intense year in many aspects. I am grateful to clients and friends, and above all my […]
This is a straight quote from Nassim Taleb (Fooled by Randomness, Black Swan, Antifragile) A private library is not an […]
Flat organizations, part of the Pancake Revolution (got the patent pending) that we have gone through, trimming management layers and […]
The phrase is from John Lennon who stole it from TS Elliott (‘amateur poets borrow; mature poets steal’). There are […]
Hardly a question I can answer with statistics, but I would tend to agree. This good article points in that […]
Donald Winnicott (1896- 1971) was a brilliant British psychoanalyst. And you won’t find many instances of my praising psychoanalysis, […]
In the old days of medical school and psychiatric training we used to say that schizophrenia was a secret society […]
In preparation for Santa, I suggest we aim at a package of shifts in the organizational life: a 10 point […]
Some organizations want agility, entrepreneurship, great innovation and superb customer centrism. But they are operating with structures, processes and behaviours […]
The Visitor is a full time member of a project team. He arrives late, very late. Smiles a lot. Takes […]
So some organizations cook very, very large ones. No, this is not a gastronomic blog. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, said […]
This is of course not something every mortal is privileged to do: to make ‘work’ an exciting, fulfilling and meaningful […]
I have recorded this for an HR and Communications conference that I could not attend. This is a good recent […]
There is a moment in the life of our kids in which they start questioning the story of Santa coming […]
Project management is a state of mind, not a software. But if you have both, it helps. Some people have […]
Happy Weekend Daily Thoughts Subscribers! Here is a compilation of 3 of some our latest posts – all with the […]
This piece of conventional wisdom is almost never true. That ‘they were ready’ is very often the a posterity rationalization. […]
I said yesterday that large scale mobilization of people (AKA social movements, AKA company culture) needs a platform. They don’t […]
In the last weeks, for a number of reasons, I have had lots of conversations about ‘corporate culture’ and in […]
Spreading the word and unleashing a movement Guest blogger: Kahlil Coyle. Social Movement Leader; Values in Action Core Team, Health […]
Welcome back Subscribers! In case you are not aware, posting of Daily Thoughts resumed on Monday 6 November after […]
This is the request we made at the beginning of a Viral Change™ programme. Forget your function and your hierarchical […]
I did not say that. Natasha Jen did. She is a designer who has given some provocative presentations under this […]
Dear Subscriber My team has been posting for a while, selected previously published Daily Thoughts. Also retweeting some of them. […]
This is model 3 (but the 4th post, confusing!) ‘The Cause’. Employees join forcers to work on a Cause: green agenda, corporate […]
Happy Weekend to all our readers Today we are taking another look at activism and grass roots communications. We hope […]
This is model 2 in the pack of 6 that I have described. There is a book, or two, and it’s […]
A while ago I posted my views on Employee Engagement. Since this has become an industry in its own right, and […]
If you are a frequent flight traveller, as I am for business reasons, you will be familiar with the standard […]
Happy Weekend to all our Readers This week we have decided to take another look at some posts that focus […]
Henry Ford is quoted to have said ‘why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they […]
Andrew Grove, ex Intel This business about speed has its limits. Brains don’s speed up. The exchange of ideas does […]
Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988), American science fiction writer, was famous for his quotes. This is one. Many uses and interpretations […]
Happy Weekend to all our Readers This week we have decided to take another look at some posts that encompass […]
Disclaimer: I don’t have shares in the company, or discounts, or commissions! No place I know can match Chateauform (http://chateauform.com) […]
A friend of mind, a great artist, posted his latest challenge in Facebook. He had presented a product idea to his […]
Saint Francis of Assisi is a 13th Century figure revered as a Saint by the Catholic Church, and who founded […]
Often you see people in organizations disillusioned with changes, considering themselves survivors of yet another reorg, getting on with the […]
With the holidays coming to a close and everyone returning to ‘work mode’, here is a recent post on employee […]
It’s 2017. Business as selfish, self-centered, a-social, ‘it’s-all-about-money-sorry’, is gone. So many people say. ‘Old fashioned views, we have moved […]
Happy Long Weekend to all our Readers This week we have decided to look at behaviour and culture, first with […]
Whatever he had in mind, it was communicated in an incredibly poor way. The prize for messaging goes to Amazon […]
This is old Psychology lesson. ‘External locus of control’ translation: the problem is somewhere else, not me. It’s the environment, […]
Whilst the holidays roll on, here is a continuation of the leadership theme to consider before the summer is over […]
A glitch in the system yesterday meant there was a duplication in the Daily Thoughts posts. Please accept our apologies […]
Good Morning! The following article extends on our recent series on leadership this week, which we hope you enjoy In […]
Morning to you. Here is our second post in a series of three on Leadership: Don’t define leadership for me. […]
We are revisiting leadership this week. This is one of a series of 3. We praise people because of […]
Happy weekend! To finish our week of recaps on Social Movement related posts, we have selected 3 more favourites […]
The second of this week’s revisited posts – this one was first published in June 2016 (check back tomorrow for part […]
As Dr Leandro Herrero is away, the Daily Thoughts will be taking a short “pause” this week. In the meantime, […]
Happy weekend to all our readers! This week we decided to look back over some old posts around organizational inflection […]
Part 2 of 2, first published November 2015 Yesterday I offered 10 types of people that challenge the status quo […]
Part 1 of 2, First published in November 2015… Who challenges in organizations? People who have nothing to lose People […]
Unless we call ‘problem’ to any management activity, as many people do even without acknowledging it, and, in which case, […]
This is an obvious desideratum. But very often it’s unrealistic. Conventional management approaches tell us that we have to communicate […]
Apologies for the delay in Daily Thoughts posts this week, we have been having some technical issues! We are now […]
Happy weekend to our readers! Behavioural Change is pivotal to all of our work at The Chalfont Project and as […]
Forget work-life balance. It was a good concept that did a lot of good but has now retired. It cannot any […]
I remember last year in the US. I had given them ideas, insights, reflections. I had shared experiences. I had […]
Happy weekend to all Daily Thoughts readers! Unbelievably we have have reached the end of another month, so it’s time […]
My experience of several health care delivery systems, both as a patient and as external consultant, is that they function […]
Social media is a colossal echo chamber where all cognitive processes are surrendered to one single driver: confirmation bias.
Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas […]