The open source phenomenon is profoundly changing the rules of the game in several businesses (publishing, software, business schools, medical research, toys industry with LEGO, healthcare and cosmetics with P&G, car manufacturing with Local Motors and big brands such as Audi, Daimler or FIAT now jumped on the bandwagon)… As we recently saw, the invention of the internet is a…
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“People don’t buy what you do! They buy why you do it!!!”
Sunday February 20th, 2011 10 commentsSimon Sinek[1] proposes a simple and elegant model: the golden circle. When talking (as everybody today) about Apple, he challenges its competitors: “Apple is just another computer company… They have the same access to the same talents, the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media, then why is it that they seem to have something different?”. For him most…
“What the Catholic Church can teach us in terms of being disrupted?”
Sunday February 6th, 2011 2 commentsAlan Moore and Gerd Leonhard[1] came up with a great metaphor in terms of illustrating the concept of disruption: The Catholic Church and Gutenberg’s invention… The clip here below summarizes the situation before and after the printing press invention in a short and convincing 4 minutes: The internet is probably the biggest technological revolution since Gutenberg’s printing press. And it…
“Why the Enablers Network looks more like the Barbarians than the Real Madrid”
Sunday January 16th, 2011 3 commentsGiven the potential impact of the work we are invited to do, I am frequently asked by the clients we meet for the first time, to explain how we are organized. My shortest reply is that we are closer to “The Barbarians F.C.” than to the Real Madrid… A study from Harvard University[1] suggests that the Real Madrid is “one…
“Walking the thin line of Authenticity!”
Sunday January 9th, 2011 6 commentsWhen I recently showed, as an example of connected leadership, the moving video of Leonhard Bernstein conducting his orchestra[1], two participants objected, on the ground that the famous master Karajan’s style was, to say the least, far more directive, and that it hadn’t prevented him from being considered the best. Knowing of the Austrian Master’s reputation, I was taken a…
“Distance to Power cripples the Brazilian economy: Does this apply to our organizations?”
Sunday September 19th, 2010 4 commentsI am always upset when people automatically assume that I go on holiday when I say that I head to Brazil, and that they add with the usual idiotic blink of the eye: “Beach, samba and palm trees”. In my modest experience, Brazilians work harder and longer hours than any European or American but the efficiency of the system is…
"Maybe it is my fault…"
Sunday May 23rd, 2010 3 commentsHere is to the wonderfully courageous, highly human and therefore imperfect leaders who courageously take the risk of exposing themselves, by getting closer to their people, aiming at co-creating clarity, purpose and wide ownership around their company’s Strategic Intent. Most of the times, their people respond in a truly mature way (“adult-adult” as the Transactional Analysis aficionados call it) and…
“Generous leaders disappear behind the Purpose”
Sunday May 16th, 2010 1 commentI had an illuminating week in Brazil, first with a wonderfully courageous leadership team nearby Porto Alegre whose intuition was that they absolutely needed to “reduce the distance” between them in order to create the conditions for “Leadership as a process” to emerge. Second, I was invited to the yearly event to which the Fundação Dom Cabral (now promoted amongst…
The plane that was flown by 500 pilots
Sunday February 28th, 2010 2 commentsThis week, we will cover the second feature of “Intelligent/Organic enterprises”, after last week’s “Strong and shared sense of Purpose”. A permanent feedback loop: Staying with the human body metaphor: the only way to compensate for the lack of a centralized governing body (is it the heart, brain, nervous system???) is for all the components, aligned on the shared Purpose,…
On our way towards "Open Economy"
Saturday January 23rd, 2010 0 commentsFor those of us, old enough to remember the 70’s, Alvin Toffler was then sharing his views that a “third wave[1]” (following the ones of agriculture and industry) was about to submerge humanity. This wave was not to be (as many mistakenly remember) an era of services but the advent of the knowledge and information economy. Toffler is still around…