Looking for an inspiring topic which would help us with our New-Year’s resolutions, I fell on this very recent (November 2015) TED speech from Harvard Professor and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger. He is the 4th director of a 75 year-long study on adult development....

A client asked me three years ago: “Do you know what makes your team very different?” I hesitated a bit as she continued: “You all obviously carry a heavy story on your shoulders and that makes you credible and different in my eyes!”. I remember leaving the meeting,...

I just finished touching base with Laurent Bonnier, Managing Partner of Strat-X, the company who is behind the Strategic Marketing simulations used by 90 of the top best MBA’s. Amongst the things that surprised him was the fact that, no matter which conference or...

For years, I have been looking for a client that would be brave enough to organize, in the context of one of their convention or seminar, a blind dinner in restaurant such as “Dans le Noir”in Paris, or “Blind Kuh” in Zurich. The purpose of taking your whole team...

Looking back at last week’s post, it becomes clear that when fear and power distance replace trust and collaboration, a whole culture will dangerously shift from creative and performant to risk averse and compliance driven, from honest, challenging and transparent to...

On February 27th, CNN commented a recent publication by the War College's Strategic Studies Institute, commissioned by exiting Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. Following the research, conducted by Leonard Wong, a research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute...

Disruption… Recently, Gerd Leonhard published a series of short (2’) clips on different and unusual aspects of this phenomenon (privacy failure, knowledge & learning, future of jobs, automation, offline as the new luxury). I encourage you to take a look at his...

This morning, actuality came knocking on the door of this blog, which explains why it is posted later than usual. The news is irrelevant in the context of the existing horrors and gigantic economic and environmental challenges. But in the microcosm of football, I read...

Built to last, the book from Stanford professors James Collins and Jerry Porras has been a revelation for millions of students, academics and executives, since its publication in 1994. It has since lost a part of its credibility (see this article in Fast Company), as...

As the novelist, who knows the nightmare of facing, without the slightest inspiration, a desperately white sheet for hours, the business leader sometimes fears this Moment of Truth, when he will have to engage his organization in an apparently dull, unspectacular but...

Recently, I saw been delivered a fascinating session explaining to business executives, how professional troops were operating, under extreme conditions, when disruption and unexpected changes were the rules of the game. The speaker, Michael Newman, explained that...

In our network, we count 9 wemen (out of 35), 1 Algerian, 4 Americans, 1 Australian, 3 Belgians, 5 Brazilians, 7 British, 3 Canadians, 1 Congolese, 1 Dutch, 9 French, 1 German, 1 Lebanese, 1 Swede, 3 Swiss (yes it counts more than 35 as we have double nationals) and...

In the recent months, still positively influenced by Nokia’s “Connecting People” way of life and belief, I happened to match executives needing to change horizon with clients looking for the rare bird. And it seems to have been happy marriages. In each of the cases,...

Merging or acquiring are two highly risky decisions to take. Following several consultancies, the proportion of such operations, failing to deliver on their promises, is around 70%. Why do we get it so wrong? A paper, to which some of us contributed, brought...

Those of you who we work for, know that we use a lot the three levers of engagement (named after Aristotle famous “modes of persuasion” or rhetorical strategies): Logos (the clarity/sanity test): The intellectual lever, absolutely vital, creator of energy. People will...

Part of our practice is to be discretely flown somewhere, in an emergency mission, in order to help diffuse the dramatic effect of the falling apart between members of a leadership team. I remember being called by the Chairman of the Board and being requested to take...

By coincidence or synchronicity, I have been confronted recently to these complaints from some of our clients: “I was misled. I was hired for this job, on the basis of rocking the boat and shaking the hierarchy. But when I do I get punished.” “The Board started this...

When Lizzie Velasquez, “visually impaired” as they say and aged 17, saw on Youtube, the title "The World's Ugliest Woman", she soon realized that the clip was featuring... her! I let you imagine the profound shock this young adolescent felt when, amongst the thousands...