I help leaders create intelligent organisations optimised to embrace disruption.
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The Leadership Myth
There is a leadership myth, originating in Hollywood, that there is a well-defined set of competencies / attributes that leaders need to possess. It suits the executive education ecosystem to embrace this incorrect reductionist perspective. On the plus side, it gives the student a sense of certainty that they will leave the programme knowing how […]
Othering and organisational design
Caution: This is heavy, even by my standards. Othering is a process whereby a group of people identify another group of people as having traits that are different and potentially threatening to the group. This involves objectifying members of the othered group and possibly even denying their humanity. Effective othering involves precision cultural engineering to […]
Ubiquitous leadership – Leaders everywhere
Quiz time Which of the following do you believe to be true in respect of business leaders? They are generally overpaid relative to the workforce. Leadership education is optimised for uncertainty. Leaders lead and managers manage. That’s right. None of them are true. Well at least for most organisations on the planet, ie those built […]
Efficiency – A species extinction signal?
Life-death balanceAn increasing number of societies today have deified efficiency. Efficiency makes sense. A fundamental driver of any living organisation is to do what is necessary with the minimum expenditure of energy. For most of our time on the planet, nutrition was not just a click away. Thus each day was a balancing act in […]
Psychological safety – A new department opportunity?
As a leader, what is your take on psychological safety?It provides me with latitude in how I enact the company strategy.A symptom of a general degradation in the resilience of workers.It enables my team to challenge my decisions without being reproached.A cause for concern, given that ‘burnt out’ workers are happy to share their employer […]
Elon Musk and the future of work
The future of work is a valuable expression, but only from a search engine optimisation perspective. You’ll note that I have used it twice already. The term has developed a life of its own, so we now use it even when addressing the ‘now’ of work. This is just one of the ways in which […]
It’s time for a leadership reset
Values minimisation It’s a sign of the time when leaders in some organisations earn over a thousand times more than the median company salary. Are they really that good? Or is the upper limit of employee value contribution limited by the focus on having most people in the organisation operating as process monkeys, slavishly adhering […]
Are you an intelligent leader?
Despite what the media is telling us, it is a mistake to think that sustainability, hybrid working, mental wellness and so on are our top priorities. We are unlikely to move the needle in any of these important spheres if we do not have capable leaders.The crisis we face is that very few leaders are […]
The future of nostalgia
Let’s face it, we’ve been through some tough times. Most recently a couple of world wars, the subprime crisis and Covid to name a few low points. There is a prevailing view that the world is generally in some sort of steady state that is occasionally punctuated with disruptive events. Thus there is much talk […]