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.
From Integrity, Miracles and Love…
Time flies… It is already five years ago that I introduced here an article written by a man I profoundly respect and consider as a thought leader, Hamilton Mann. Hamilton is the Group Vice President of Digital Marketing and Digital Transformation of Thales (a global...
“From market driven to market driving: challenging conventional customer centricity”
Jean-Claude Larreche is the holder of the “Alfred H. Heineken Chair in Marketing” at Insead. His last book is called “The Momentum Effect”[1] and has met quite a wide success since its May 2008 launch. One particular tool has grabbed my interest and, with...
“How the janitor saved our company”
SRC Holdings[1] was founded in 1983, when 13 employees of International Harvester (at the time a leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery) bought that part of the company that was into the business of maintenance and repair of diesel engines. That subsidiary had...
“Are you happy to outsource your strategic thinking process?”
Would you find wise, as a leader, to outsource the most critical, educational and engaging process of your organization? This is what happens though when we delegate our strategic reflection to third parties. Nick van Heck (our partner from ELP Network) has come up...
“Everybody wants to “Grow”: the biggest blockage is our orthodoxy!”
I don't breach any confidentiality by sharing that wherever I travel in the world, “Growth” has become the central strategy piece of all organizations I speak to… at the point of wondering if un-grow couldn’t be a really worthy disruptive strategy! So everybody wants...
“A true Master does more with less: a powerful lesson from Leonard Bernstein”
I often feel privileged to work for the clients I serve. I am also very fortunate to count on exceptionally gifted partners coming from such different backgrounds as academia, psychology, consultancy, business, military or arts. Nick McRoberts is one of my partners....
“Concrete steps to lead in a complex environment Part. II”
Nick van Heck and Berend Jan Hilberts, our partners from Executive Learning Partnership[1], recently shared with me an excellent HBR article[2] from David Snowden founder of “The Cognitive Edge”[3]. Snowden suggests an interesting frame for preparing ourselves to lead...
"Concrete steps to lead in a complex environment"
In the (not so) old days, problems were solved through a four to five steps approach: Problem definition and scope Root cause analysis Selection of solution Implementation Monitoring and feedback It is clear, one-dimensional, sequential, linear and reassuring: For...
“Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose”
“Scanning the periphery”[1] is the advice given by G. Day and P. Schoemaker in a typical HBR article (starting well by providing an inspiring insight then… crashing in flames when suggesting traditional old ways of thinking and 21 steps recipes). Scanning the...
“It is better to seek forgiveness than permission!”: what SBU leaders can learn from the amazing FiBras story…
I often hear well intentioned leaders blaming their circumstances (often called Executive Board) for the impossibility to run the business as smartly as they think it could and should be. Here is a story I came across during the month of August when working in...
“Distance to Power cripples the Brazilian economy: Does this apply to our organizations?”
I 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...
“We think of our future as anticipated memories” or when our emotional memory takes over from our factual memory…
Finally back to our blog... Thank you for your patience and numerous requests (sometimes orders) to move on. So here we go again! An interesting event took place during my family’s trip to Brazil, hosted by the Portuguese airlines TAP. On the way to, our collective...
"The unsual way that Fundação Dom Cabral is organized"
As you probably all know by now, the Fundação Dom Cabral is one of the world’s leading centre for executive and organizations development. In 2010, it was ranked 6th by the Financial Times (I am no great fan of such rankings; it is there for the record and those who...
The Fair Process of Engagement
Who said that Business Schools are way too expensive for what they truly bring? I did… and need to change this slightly: Business Schools may be a good deal when somebody else pays to go at your place and brings you one or two interesting models from an “edutainment”...
“From passive consumption to active co-creation”
“This was the best experience of my professional career: the program you designed kept external interventions to the minimum and allowed us to share our own experiences, learn together and from each other. We now feel that our future does not depend from consultants...
"Love it, Change it or Leave it!"
So, Dunga’s Brazil is finally heading home after betraying of all its “footballistic values”, having blindly followed leadership and organizational styles which were so obviously “un-Brazilian”. Far worse, Brazil lost its unofficial ranking of No1 favorite nation in...
"The eight misconceptions about engagement"
What pushed Steve Balmer, Microsoft's C.E.O. to seek to motivate his people in such a way that gained him instantaneous reputation on the web… Today, type “Dance monkey boy” on Google and the following clip appears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edN4o8F9_P4&t=7s...
“Insights, one week into South Africa’s World Cup”
M.K. Gandhi used to say that “The only authentic religion is the universal fraternity amongst people”. I guess, if he were reincarnated today in South Africa, he may have added: “And these days football is the only thing which seems to connect people from the five...
“Going down, all the Saints are helpful”
“Para descer, todo Santo ajuda” (to go down all the Saints are helpful) say the pragmatic people of the Brazilian state of Bahia (where my wonderful wife comes from). A recent event brought this old saying back to the surface: the Fundação Dom Cabral (www.fdc.org.br)...
“Man is limited not so much by his tools but by his vision”
I love this quote from Richard Pascale and am sometimes sadly reminded of it when my partners and I or even a respected client are unable to break the boundaries from our self-created, self-limiting “mental prisons”. It is so exasperating when we find ourselves...
When Followers Give Legitimacy To Their Leader
Duncan Sterling was the kind of student any Dean would dream of having on their M.B.A. as his sharp mind and remarks were keeping faculty on the edge and he would “take no bullshit”… I guess he hasn’t changed much! He commented on a recent post of this blog and added...
“Engaging Leadership” has been written for leaders who are about to engage their organisations in change."