Blog
Take a look at recent insights in leadership, strategy and more.
Cultures, Sub‐cultures, and Cultural Islands
BlogHow to avoid culture being something that happens to you, and instead purposefully establish the cultural features you need for success in your organisational situation Why does culture matter?...
The obscure art of sense-making
BlogHow effective is your sense-making? Sense-making in complex business and organisational situations is critical for the purpose of deciding on a course of action to address a set of...
You can’t control your way to alignment
BlogGetting an organisation or a team pointing consistently in the same direction is famously difficult. Unfortunately, we face a counter-intuitive truth: You can’t control your way to alignment. On...
The (foregone) opportunity of dialogue at large events
A series of well-informed and insightful speakers with some Q&A can make for a great event. An even better one might involve getting the “audience” to do some of the talking. Usually, the...
Reading the manual – understanding human interaction
I’m not the first to say this, I know, but it’s worth repeating: We gain from learning to understand more about how people interact. Many of us are never really taught this – certainly not in any...
What’s your habitual time unit of focus? And is it the only one you need?
What’s your habitual time unit of focus? An hour, a day, a week, a month – or more – or less? What quantum of time do you block out for a singular, intense task? Probably all intervals of time have...
Time management for big projects
How effective is your time management, especially when it comes to big, difficult, daunting goals? Checklist and fresh insights available One step at a time – we know that’s the way to get something...
Managers are chosen; leaders emerge
Management involves the skilful exercise of formal authority derived from appointment to a position of power. Leadership, on the other hand, rests on the ability to influence people, often through...
Closing the gaps
Up and coming managers and leaders need to see the gaps in their approach. In the old saying, what got them where they are today won’t get them where they need to be tomorrow. In fact, they might...
Managing distractions
…especially significant ones we care about. Last year, I allowed too much of my capacity, especially my reading capacity, to be taken up following the news—hoping for some signs of sense prevailing,...
Wasting energy?
We all like a bit of freedom—the chance to act on our own initiative. Much of the time that’s a good thing. Recently, however, I’ve been noticing just how much energy can be wasted if everyone is...
Learning or doing, which is the priority?
We need to keep learning e.g. about people; and we need to keep doing or delivering e.g. in a business. So which is more important? Delivering perhaps (it’s certainly likely to be more urgent), but...
Refined or just reticent?
Or is it just natural human reticence that most of us could do with overcoming (though some were never troubled in this way)? For many, we need to work at putting ourselves out there to be judged....
The subtlety is the point
Many situations seem to require being focused and broad at the same time; being specialist as well as generalist. That appears to be a contradiction, a dichotomy—one that needs very careful handling...
Setting and defending boundaries
Flexibility is a good thing. However... Sometimes—and about some things—we need to be inflexible: We need to have boundaries. We need to decide what we are going to accept and what we are not going...