• When you let your people go, who takes care of those who stay?

    Friday January 27th, 2012 0 comments

    As I recently mentioned, my professional “Deep Intent” comes from the sad memory, of seeing brave and respectable men begging my grandfather for work, because of a sudden closing of their coal mines in Southern Belgium. Laying people off, no matter how economically justified and how much courage it takes from the leader to do so, should always be considered…

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  • 2012: Our opportunity to unveil the Hero within ourselves!

    Saturday January 21st, 2012 4 comments

    “Strategy is not about guessing the future but preparing for whatever it will be!”. Many of you have heard our friend and partner Nick van Heck claim this. And preparing our organizations, start with preparing ourselves, as leaders and human beings. Many of you know the fascination that the work of Joseph Campbell has on me. Campbell was a university…

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  • So this is Christmas…

    Saturday December 24th, 2011 0 comments

    Eugenio Mussak is a famous speaker/Professor/Writer/Philosopher on Leadership. Generosity is his and his wife’s, Luciana, trademark. They are hosting our Brazilian Branch in their own São-Paulo office. I was having dinner at their place recently and Eugenio commented a short article[1], which had moved him: “In July 1958, Celia, a 10 years old girl, suffering from polio since she was…

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  • The most successful posts of 2011

    Saturday December 10th, 2011 0 comments

    Our blog is now two and half years old and we would like to thank you all for your loyalty over that period. As you will have noticed, we changed to Mailchimp this year. This company sends you the weekly e-mail and confirms with your filters and firewalls that Enablers is not a source of spam. They also give us…

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  • Disrupt or be Disrupted: the Principles of War by Michael Newman

    Thursday December 1st, 2011 0 comments

    In 1988, as a newly commissioned Officer in the British Army, the world of disruption was my context. As a commander of 28 Royal Engineer soldiers (the famous ‘Sappers’) I was a very small, but I like to think important, part of the NATO master plan to defend Western Europe from the Warsaw Pact. Back in the 1980s, Hundreds of…

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  • Occupy Wall Street!

    Friday November 25th, 2011 2 comments

    When interviewed about the roots of the new “Open Source Economy”, I refer back to the 1970′s intuitions of then futurist Alvin Toffler, author of truly visionary books such as the “Future Shock” (note the 70′s influence of the cover;) or the “Third wave“. Toffler saw coming some of the profound mutations of our era and in particular the fact…

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  • Sense of Purpose saves lives

    Saturday November 19th, 2011 1 comment

    In my office, well in sight, are the remains of a bed’s part coming from a concentration camp with a profile of the Virgin Mary engraved. This is all that the nazis returned to my grandfather, about his best friend, a catholic priest, caught by the Gestapo for hiding Jewish children. Father de Soil had no family left and he…

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  • Smile, and the world smiles with you… by Michael Newman

    Saturday November 12th, 2011 0 comments

    In a non-descript, grey and often wet corner of East Manchester, just off the ring motorway, you will find a large furniture shop with the not especially inspiring name of ‘Housing Units’.1 There are many other stores in the Greater Manchester area from which to furnish a house, but there is something unusual about a visit to Housing Units. If…

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  • Narcissistic? Psychopathic? Or humble? Choose your style…

    Saturday November 5th, 2011 2 comments

    In which population do we find the highest percentage of people with psychopathic tendencies? Not in jail, not in gangs but… in Boardrooms!!! This is the surprising stand that one of the world’s most respected specialists in psychopathy, Professor Robert Hare, takes in his book published in 2007, “Snakes in suit”. Of course the statement is provocative and does not…

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  • “Most integration processes fail by focusing exclusively on Logos”

    Saturday October 29th, 2011 0 comments

    Go back to your own experience: 8 to 10 months into the integration process (after a merger or an acquisition), the momentum seems to slow and difficulties surface. Michael Newman and I researched literature to see whether or not the observation our colleagues and I had about this specific moment was matched by others. These are some of what we…

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