May 2015

• ‘We should have done’ and ‘too bad we didn’t’. Don’t push the self-suffocating , negative button
• The organization’s collective self-belief is often hidden. Leaders need to hear the unsaid.
• The hard sell of a big theme supported by dubious, incoherent but dramatically presented evidence
• In-company clicktivism, not an elevated form of engagement
• The Zappos inmates running the asylum, take two.Warning: this post contains flashes of cut-and-paste organizational models.
• Employees don’t need ‘Voice’. They were born with one. Employee Voice is an alibi for lazy Employee Engagement.
• Zappos without the zapatos: not all inmates want to take over the asylum.
• The Company Global One Culture does not exist. But pretending that it does holds us together.
• Status Unfinished: the perfect state of a healthy organization is beta
• ‘You make sense’, is the greatest compliment in the era of non-sense-making
• Culture secret in one line: people look up, and people look sideways. And also down. As simple as easily dismissed.
• There will always be hierarchy, power and rituals in the organization. The question is how smart we are to chose the right trade off.
• The indecision is final. Keep calm and wait for the next.
• That great new hire, welcome with fanfare, saviour of the team, is leaving. Oh well!
• Always explain the trade off. There is always one, and people can always understand it
• Good silos, bad silos is like good cholesterol and bad cholesterol
• Mathematize: the 9 things you need to know about things that start with numbers
• Walking Emergencies in the payroll
• Most likely the problem is not ‘knowing’. So, (1) re-training is a distraction; (2) Behaving is the issue; (3) That means culture,
• The Twentypercenters
• The last thing you need is a robust, sustainable culture. Next time you use ‘sustainable’, add ‘but not too much’.
• The brutal power of the analogy as a shortcut to the road of Unthinking
• There have been losers in the UK General Election and none of them are a political party.
• ‘Powered by Viral Change TM‘: a Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century
• No list of ‘The best treats of X’ or ‘The 10 habits of Y’ surprises me anymore.
• Listening is more than being silent. Learn to spot the listener, and call out the ones who pretend.
• Steal ideas, implant with caution, observe, tweak, observe again, never close your eyes.
• The battle for what? The UK General Election has an accounting narrative. My post Charlie Hebdo election placard reads: Je ne suis pas un numéro.
• Trophy employees, their sugar company and its useful idiots
• ‘We are both saying the same with different words’. No, we are not.
• The halo effect of a budget cut: thinking postponed