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.
“The Greatest Danger to our Future is Apathy!”
It started with the famous British Anthropologist and Ethologist (specialist in animal behaviours, chimpanzees in her case), Jane Goodall. Desperate in front of our collective passivity, she voiced that terrifying prediction: “The Greatest Danger to our Future is...
Sense of Purpose saves lives
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...
Smile, and the world smiles with you… by Michael Newman
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...
Narcissistic? Psychopathic? Or humble? Choose your style…
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...
“Most integration processes fail by focusing exclusively on Logos”
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...
“How Loss Aversion may unconsciously impact our strategic thinking”
Wikipedia provides the following definition for the psychological phenomenon known as Loss Aversion: “In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Some studies suggest that losses...
“How Dilemmas Management will help your strategic thinking”
In a recent discussion, a psychiatrist friend of mine elaborated around the notion of “choice” and I found it particularly relevant to our professional lives: “Many people at the executive levels display one form or another of perfectionism. They are therefore very...
“We’re Number one: What could we possibly learn from you?” by Michael Newman
Our success comes from being smart; yours is simply due to luck. We benefit from our carefully crafted strategies; you just happened to be in the right place at the right time. We are confident; you are arrogant…. Dismissing the opposition is a comforting pastime, but...
Five steps to Death
I am profoundly grateful to those wonderful people who manage to summarize otherwise long and repetitive business books, in an article of 4 to 6 pages. A great company for this is obviously “Executive Book Summaries” (and now you know how consultants appear to find...
Is the crisis really back or not? For some, it increasingly seems that Stock Exchanges' agitation (leave aside ethics and rationale) is cut off from the reality of those who really work and create value. And for others, suffices to study some leading indicators to be...
The emergence of Talents Networks
In the true spirit of P.F.E. (Proudly Found Elsewhere), so typical of the Open Source Economy, I borrowed the title (and a lot of the content) of this post to Neil Perkin, one of my colleagues in Gerd Leonhard’s “Futures Agency”. I’d like to thank him for the source...
The Leap of Faith
I wonder how the officers in the US Army in Afghanistan felt when presented this bright slide, issued by bright consultants, seeking to present them with the complexity that they were faced with in the occupied country… One of the officers present to the slide show is...
My best interview on the future of Leadership
(NEW CLIP OF INTERVIEW IN PORTUGUESE ADDED AT END OF THIS POST) During my recent stay in São-Paulo, I was interviewed by Patricia Bispo, who runs an excellent site dedicated to people and leadership issues. Her questions helped me clarify my thoughts on the future of...
"Youth is a State of Mind"
Ben Clayton-Jolly, one of our partners running Inspiring Leadership, sent me the following poem by Samuel Ullman. I found it profound and moving and chose to leave it with you, as a hopeful inspiration during the few weeks during which I will be traveling and unable...
"The leadership generation gap and the impact of the changing landscape"
Arto Joensuu is one of these sharp and bright minds that Nokia used to enable, foster and develop. He has now started his own business in the Middle East and is a remarkable speaker on the impact of "digital" on today's economy and leadership. He publishes a blog...
"Generation gap in leadership"
Last week’s post has been our most successful to date. Heartfelt thanks to all of you who read and shared it with so many new others! The post created a lot of direct exchanges, as, I guess, most of you hesitate in posting public comments and sharing confidential...
"Adding my own signature to the job!"
My team and I were invited to support The Dow Chemical Company’s LATAM region in implementing a strong initiative blending local reality with strategic direction coming from headquarters. To that effect, Pedro Suarez, the President for the whole zone (covering from...
“Challenging the orthodoxies of Executive Development”
One of my personal projects is to find partners interested in radically new ways to consider and deliver Executive Education. These could be Business Schools as well as Corporate Academies. I had written a paper about my vision,...
"Why Pathos is crucial in any engagement process"
Antonio Damasio[1] and Joseph Ledoux[2] are two leading neuroscientists. I admit a slight bias in favor of Ledoux who fits well with our Enablers philosophy of hiring bright and atypical individuals: He also heads a rock band, called “The Amygdaloids”[3]....
"How to live up to our brand promise"
In a Financial Times article from November 2006, titled “My two weeks in Hell with the tortured Soul of Dell”, journalist Stefan Stern shared his frustration at his Dell experience, conflicting badly with the brand’s promise such as conveyed in its tagline,...
"Leading ourselves to exhaustion!!!"
Is it because everybody agrees, in private, that the fundamental problems of the recent crisis still have to be addressed, that most Boardrooms resonate with the same sacred word: GROWTH? Is it like a desperate and collective blind attempt to cash in before a...
“Engaging Leadership” has been written for leaders who are about to engage their organisations in change."