Our Blog
Our blog’s inspiration comes from the work we do, the knowledge shared between our clients and us. It is dedicated to effective leadership.
How would you deal with him, if Higuita were part of your team?
Image courtesy of Pixabay. A.I. generated portrait of Albert Einstein René Higuita will forever remain a legend of football (soccer), like Bobby Charlton, Maradona, Messi, Pelé, Lev Yashin and several others. In the 90’s, Higuita was the goalkeeper of the best...
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same” (R. Kipling): why sowing the seeds of defeat in victory?
It is 312 BC and the Roman army understands with despair that they don’t have a single chance to escape the trap laid by their Samnites opponents. They are surrounded and blocked at the bottom of a valley and throw their weapon downs. Refusing to listen to his...
Board members, if you have been fantastic during the crisis so did your people: So, don’t dilapidate the positive Covid-19 effect!
Costa-Gavras is the film producer who most impacted my youth. His movies offer a disturbing reflection on totalitarian regimes from extreme left to right. In “Section Spéciale”, he relates a historical feat of World War II, displaying the dynamics between French...
Why we don’t believe in training
I recently wrote here an article warning on the fact that Webinars and Distance Learning were not to be discarded of course but would partially or totally fail to address the Ethos and Pathos critical components of any experience intending to produce a lasting impact...
Leadership in the face of Covid-19: A Matter of Life and Death? (By Michael Newman)
This post has been written by Michael Newman who kindly offered to publish it here Who do we try to save and who do we let die? The dilemma has become familiar in stories from intensive care units on the Covid-19 frontline. Most doctors never expected to have...
Webinars are to Executive Education what Facebook and Instagram are to professional journalism
Daniel Kahneman was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize of Economics, for his work proving that “Emotional Memory” lasts much longer than “Factual Memory”. Prof. Antonio Damasio earned his fame as top neuroscientist for demonstrating that people move from intention...
The Future is for Humble Leaders
I am wondering these days if anyone will still want to hear about joining a webinar in the future, since we have been flooded by them for the past 6 weeks. I confess to have taken part to two of them (with friends I enjoy working with, The Futures Agency, StratX and...
Two months observing successful “Corona-Leaders” and five traits they have in common
For 25 years, I have advised leaders on how to adapt their style to disruptions and, like everybody else, I never thought I would witness what we see with Covid-19. The past two months, I have observed the “Corona-Leaders” who rose to the occasion and make a huge...
When we come out the other side…
Andy Barham was a patient invited to speak at the Convention of a medical device company. I was invited to talk about Change Leadership. Andy stunned the audience by his authenticity, simplicity and humour. But like many of those "Comedy Artists", Andy also has a...
Will you follow a leader who says “Me First”?
Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli Historian and Professor and probably the most listened to futurist and thinker of the XXIst century. Here is an article (free viewing) he just wrote for the Financial Times (20th March 2020) in which he elegantly summarized in this...
Leading in Covid-19 days: How can I fly like an Eagle, when I am surrounded by turkeys?
Stanley McChrystal is a former Army general whose unusual leadership style earned him several victories in the war against unconventional opponents such as the Taliban in Afghanistan. In an excellent NYT article, he drew a comparison between battling unpredictable...
“If you can keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs and blame it on you” (R. Kipling) or “Leading even when we don’t know: How should we react to Corona-Hysteria?”
I love those words of Rudyard Kipling in his famous poem "If". One of my very good friends and partners in crime, sent me this fascinating view that some government seems to hold as how to plan their response to Covid-19: The actual situation reminds me of Dave...
“Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t have to.”(Richard Branson)
I recently had dinner with a friend, CHRO in a large multinational. A strong idealist, considering his mission to be to develop and prepare their employees for the shock of the Disruption Economy, he was surprisingly annoyed. “Didier, how do you create an HR Community...
From Leading my Team to Engaging a Community
The reason for talking about “Engaging a Community” is that it becomes increasingly relevant in the Disruption Economy! The Disruption Economy will strongly impact the way we consider Strategy, Organization and Leadership. As I like to explain, it will demand to...
Reasons to believe in Mankind!
Dear readers, dear friends, I owe you an apology for letting our blog down in the 2nd part of 2019! This is due to a lot of (wonderful) work. Since mid-August I am on a 7/7 rhythm. As this will slow down in 2020, I will get back to my weekly habit of sharing...
When “Guardians of the Temple” sabotage your Transformation
“No progress without transgression!” claims Hamilton Mann, Thales’ Digital Marketing & Digital Transformation Director, “Every innovation is a disobedience to a rule, a norm, a habit, a process, a way of doing things, an established thought, a belief system that...
Is this truly a leadership topic?
When Saul Bekin, a Brazilian consultant and business mentor, shared a TED speech titled “Sleep is your superpower”, and commenting it with “Unmissable”, I confess that my first thought was “Thank you for confirming that LinkedIn increasingly seems like Facebook...
Learning to let go: The fifth step in Tuckman cycle
You probably all heard about a classic in team dynamics, called the Tuckman cycle: When assembling, a team (even a couple of people) tends to start with a stage called "Forming" (socialisation, need for inclusion), then it will naturally migrate towards "Storming"...
“Be the bird” by Hamilton Mann
Hamilton Mann is the Group Director, Digital Marketing and Digital Transformation at Thales, an 80'000 people French multinational I came across this article he recently wrote on the topic of innovation. The reason to republish it, with his consent, is that, exactly...
Am I a stone carver or a Cathedral builder?
I work a lot with the themes of Purpose and Deep Intent. A few days ago, I came across a very interesting Cassie Werber’s article dedicated to the same topic. Putting the record straight, INSEAD professor Gianpiero Petriglieri claims that, if it is fundamental to give...
You never will be too empathetic!
Recently, Korn-Ferry published an article about feedback, which was quickly interpreted by some as “too much empathy isn’t good!”. My reply to one of them was that, after 35 years of professional life, I was still expecting to find anyone loaded with too much empathy!...
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“Engaging Leadership” has been written for leaders who are about to engage their organisations in change."