One of the surest ways to burn money is to invest in a culture initiative. Culture often gets treated as something that can be improved with workshops and by by hanging up posters reminding people of company values. But in reality, culture is not something you can directly build. It’s an output—a reflection of how […]
How Leaders Shape Culture without the Fluff Read Post »
When you’ve been around long enough, you see patterns in behavior, individual and organizational. And you hear people say things, and repeat them again and again, sometimes really stupid things. When I say ‘stupid’, I mean misinformed, shortsighted, and simple plain wrong things that people hear and then repeat. Often they perpetuate fads and myths
10 uncomfortable truths every leader should read Read Post »
Why do strategies fail? Apart from making wrong choices, one topic stands out: failure to engage teams and help them understand a new strategy. Strategy communication is so crucial, yet few companies truly nail it. Before you can link individual roles, responsibilities, and targets to the strategy, people need to understand what the strategy means
Aligning Employees on Strategy – The Art of Strategic Dialogues Read Post »
“Here we go again.” This was my initial thought when a client was reluctant to establish structures for strategy implementation. I had seen similar hesitation before – and the negative consequences of lacking strategy governance. Neglecting governance – reasons vary, see below – is a bad idea. Without strategy governance, leaders and staff often get distracted
Avoiding the Tyranny of the Urgent – The Power of Strategy Governance Read Post »
Think about strategy conversations as a seed. And think about your team environment as soil. If the seed falls on toxic or infertile soil, and nothing will grow from it, but weeds. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith conceptualized the team performance curve, a J-shaped graph, illustrating five levels of teamwork. Unless you become at least
Great Teams Create Great Strategy. But Most Teams aren’t Teams. Read Post »
The blind pursuit of productivity has led to an epidemic of corporate gaslighting. At the heart of this lies a fundamental flaw: when leaders fail to define a clear business strategy they react to the negative consequences with a Pavlovian response: they prescribe training for employees. Conflicting Priorities and the Tyranny of the Urgent Most
Blaming Employees – The Corporate Gaslighting Epidemic Read Post »
The environment in which we design strategy matters more than leaders often realize. The leadership culture, and the wider business culture, dictate the nature of strategy, and its chances of success. In this article, I introduce you to the Culture Continuum, and I describe why good business strategy can only be cultivated in a people-centric
Dog Eat Dog and Tree Huggers: Why the Wrong Environments Can’t Create Good Strategy Read Post »
What’s the job of an executive leader? So many thoughts come to mind. But in a nutshell it comes down two two things: they’ve got to define the choices to win in a company’s chosen marketplace (that’s business strategy) and make sure everyone’s vibing on the same frequency (that’s company culture). Crafting a Business Strategy
The Essence of Executive Leadership: Nailing Business Strategy and Culture Read Post »
This is an excerpt from an interview with Alex Brueckmann that was first published by Authority Magazine – read the full interview here. In order to make sure that we are all on the same page, let’s begin with a simple definition. What does Operational Scalability mean to you? At its core, operational scalability is
Business myths are often perpetuated and become widely accepted as truth, despite being far from accurate. Let’s debunk four common myths: that work-life balance as the key to happiness, that sustainable businesses cannot exist at scale, the assumption that the customer is always right, and the misconception that failure is always bad. Myth #1: Work-Life
Busting Business Myths: Four Misconceptions That You Should Let Go Read Post »
Everyone talks about it, everyone wants it, but not everyone understands it. Empowerment has become a buzzword in the world of organizational management. Empowerment is a multi-faceted concept that involves giving employees the tools, resources, and support they need to make informed decisions and take ownership of their work. Unfortunately, there are still many misconceptions
Empowerment: 5 Common Misconceptions We Should Leave Behind Read Post »
Performance-based pay is a common practice in many organizations, large and small, aimed at incentivizing employees to perform at their best. However, it can have negative consequences, including a hyper-competitive work environment, resentment among non-eligible employees, subjectivity in reward allocation, unaligned performance and reward structures, and a sole focus on easy-to-measure results. To counter these
Even the world’s top athletes know that they can’t do it alone. They work with coaches who aren’t necessarily better at their sport, but are experts at providing personalized guidance and support to help them reach new heights of success. The same goes for senior leaders. The Success of World’s Top Business Leaders As an
Why the Most Accomplished Leaders Work with Executive Coaches Read Post »
How corporate jargon kills performance – One of the most interesting characteristics I try to uncover at the start of a collaboration with a client is this: the amount of corporate BS and jargon that people use in conversations and meetings. While this might sound odd for a consultant like me (I realize that us strategy guys use a lot of weird lingo ourselves), but it tells me more about a team’s ability to reach results than you might think. Apart from being an annoying habit, why bother? Because corporate BS and jargon are more than just annoying. They are real performance killers.
How corporate jargon kills performance Read Post »
