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.
Leading From Love with Rumi (and Chris Parker…)
Rumi is one of the most influential poet and thinker of a region extending from Turkey, Middle East to the Indian Continent (even to the USA, where he is considered the best selling poet!). Born, in what previously was Iran, on the 13th Century, he was celebrated as a...
"Maybe it is my fault…"
Here 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...
“Generous leaders disappear behind the Purpose”
I 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...
“Egocentric leaders destroy value”
Last week’s post on “Leadership as a process” has generated a lot of discussions via direct e.mails (it must be thanks to the football clip…) I thought useful to summarize and report conversations held with two CEO’s whose challenges were around: Is “leadership as a...
Leadership is the ball: leadership is a collective process not an individual attribute
Synchronicity may be seen as a pure coincidence, or an esoteric “was written in the stars” sort of blessed encounter or the fact that we create our own flourishing environment by continuously sharing, listening and being curious. Such a fortunate moment happened this...
“How the Cirque du Soleil deals with Complexity”
A moment of exceptional beauty and aesthetics to start this week: please take a look at this short clip of highlights of “Alegria”, one of the Cirque du Soleil’s most successful shows… Observe the complexity of movements, the absolute necessity of perfect timing and...
"The Purposeful Leader"
When confronted to complexity, humans tend to respond by increasing control, micro-management and closing. The recent crisis provided a strong although well intentioned illustration of this: Some CEO’s were requesting daily cash flow statements of their people as a...
“To be in command and out of control”
My partners and I are about to embark on a journey, with several organizations in the world, which have decided to seriously engage their people in their strategy implementation and create (more) “Intelligent Organizations”. I was looking for leaders having taken...
“Being a victim of disruption or being the disruptor?”
As promised, last week, I propose to give us some time for reflection on the theme of the “Open Economy” and would like to invite you (via e.mail or on the blog) to co-create the “Disruption Experience” which we want to be novel, powerful and impactful. The...
“The Game Changers in the Open Economy”
In an excellent “post” (article) on his blog[1], Seth Godin creates a distinction between the two cultures that internet has enabled: one made of people whom, we would say, work following the GRAVITAS principles and go deep in their thinking, seeking to be real...
“Leading in the Open Economy: disrupting, connecting, tribalizing and engaging”
After seeing how the new “Open Economy” will impact the way we strategize (from guessing the future to preparing for it) and organize (from centralized, hierarchical and pyramidal organizations towards more organic, decentralized and “intelligent organizations”,...
“Connecting People!”
After covering the two first features of an “intelligent organism”, a strong and shared sense of Purpose and a purpose-related feedback loop, let’s explore the third one: A fertile ground of relationships: An engaging Purpose and a constant feedback loop designed to...
The plane that was flown by 500 pilots
This 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...
"From pyramidal to organic structures"
I hope to have made the point by now that, in order to strive in the fast changing “Open Network Economy”, we should not rely on the traditional, pyramidal, leaders-dependent organizations but rather start design “intelligent organizations”. In other terms, we must...
Why I can’t agree with Groucho Marx
Still in “The starfish and the spider: the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations”[1], Brafman and Beckstrom report the story of Dave Garrison, CEO of Netcom (one of the first Internet Service Provider firm) in 1995 who was on his way to a road show to get...
“The starfish and the spider or the urge to design intelligent organizations”
In their book, Brafman and Beckstrom[1] compare the obedient, centrally organized and hierarchical Aztecs and Mayas to the rebellious, purpose led and decentralized Apache tribes, in their capacity to deal with totally new and unexpected “competition” coming out of...
"Don't call this Economy 2.0!!!"
Such was the cry from the heart of Marco A. F. da Silva, a Brazilian banker this week, when we were confronting our visions of the profound mutation of the Economy… “Calling it Economy 2.0 will give it a flavor of the month taste. This is not a fad, something deeper...
On our way towards "Open Economy"
For 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...
“The five dysfunctions of a team and how to solve them”
I recently commented here, on the ways to bring teams from a “languishing” to a “flourishing” state. We have seen (http://blog.enablersnetwork.com/2009/11/01/marcial-losada-explains-his-research-for-our-blog-readers/) that, during his research, Marcial Losada could...
"Which footprint do we want to leave/live as leaders of the next decade?”
Wikipedia defines Synchronicity as “the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated, occurring together in a meaningful manner”. It was the famous psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung who coined this term in the 1920’s. Two apparently unrelated events took...
“People listen to what we do not to what we say!!!”
On an intercontinental flight, a senior Citibanker proved me once, that people don’t listen to what we say but to what we do!: “Touch your skull! He said and so did I. Touch your forehead! And so I did, wondering what he was trying to get at… Touch your nose! And did,...
“Engaging Leadership” has been written for leaders who are about to engage their organisations in change."