Tag Archives: leadership

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Words and Looks: Leadership Lessons from A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol, was first published on December 19, 1843. So it’s close enough to roll this blog out again. Happy Holidays to all! Management gurus have drawn lessons on leadership from diverse sources, ranging from the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged A Chritsmas Carol, change, Charles Dickens, leadership, renewal | Comments Off on Words and Looks: Leadership Lessons from A Christmas Carol

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!

Steven Spielberg’s 1975 movie, Jaws, tells the story of a seaside town whose shores are terrorized by a killer shark. After several fatal attacks, the town sheriff, played by Roy Scheider, sets out to hunt the monster in a dilapidated … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Adrian Wooldridge, change, complex systems, Dofasco, ecological perspective, figure and ground, Gore-Tex, human condition, humanistic management, Jaws, John Micklethwait, leadership, management theory, Peter Drucker, scientific management, Spotify, tensions, W.L. Gore | Comments Off on You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!

A Fierce Old Story: Fighting a Plague with Common Decency

The rats gave the first clue: they staggered onto the streets, emitted a drop of blood from their noses and died in droves. As their bodies piled up, newspapers agitated, and citizens complained – why was the sanitation department not … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Albert Camus, allegory, analogical inquiry, analogy, common decency, COVID-19, evidence-based, leadership, pandemic, plague, Robert McKee, Willa Cather | Comments Off on A Fierce Old Story: Fighting a Plague with Common Decency

When the Science is Uncertain, Turn to the Humanities

On June 17, 2020 from 1pm to 2pm. Eastern Time I will be giving a TED-style talk and hosting a discussion with i4j. The password is i4jcommunity. i4j Innovation for Jobs is a global leadership forum organized by the IIIJ Foundation, … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abstraction.navigatng, analogical inquiry, change, community, complex systems, context, coronavirus, creativity, crisis, destruction, ecocycle, ecological perspective, innovation, leadership, narrative, renewal, wayfinding | Comments Off on When the Science is Uncertain, Turn to the Humanities

Forces of Nature: Understanding How Ecosystems Grow, Thrive and Regenerate

My latest article, Forces of Nature, has just been published in Strategy+Business. In it I discuss Canadian ecologist, “Buzz” Holling’s adaptive cycle and how, transformed into the ecocycle, it can help us understand the dynamics of complex adaptive systems.

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged adaptive cycle, complex, ecocycle, Holling, innovation, leadership, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Forces of Nature: Understanding How Ecosystems Grow, Thrive and Regenerate

Lead Like A Gardener: The Movie

This is the video of my short plenary presentation at the 10th Annual Global Peter Drucker Forum held in Vienna on November 28 and 19 in Vienna. For all the video from the conference see: Global Peter Drucker Forum 2018 … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged adaptive cycle, change, community, complex systems, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecological rationality, ecology, ecosystem, Henry Mintzberg, leadership, meaning, means and ends, metaphor, mission, narrative, Pope Francis, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Lead Like A Gardener: The Movie

BREXIT: A Study in Complexity

British politics is in a real mess. Mired in the Brexit debate, its current predicament is best captured in the poetry of the Victorian writer Matthew Arnold; “Wandering between two worlds, the one dead, the other powerless to be born.” … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Brexit, change, community, complex adaptive systems, complex systems, creativity, David Cameron, ecocycle, ecological perspective, identity, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, leadership, Matthew Arnold, Nigel Farage, Theresa May, Tory, UKIP, utility | Comments Off on BREXIT: A Study in Complexity

The Ecology of a Social Movement: The Quakers and Social Reform – Public Talk RSA London December 7 2018

On Friday December 7 2018 I will be at the RSA’s Rawthmell’s Café 8 John Adam Street, London, speaking on the Ecology of a Social Movement, using the Quakers of the First Industrial Revolution as my example. They were an astonishing … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, change, community, complex systems, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecological rationality, innovation, leadership, narrative, Quakers, renewal, social change, social reform | Comments Off on The Ecology of a Social Movement: The Quakers and Social Reform – Public Talk RSA London December 7 2018

Lead Like a Gardener! – Agile and Design Thinking Will Become Management Fads Unless We Expand Our Concept of Management

This blog is a shortened version of a full-length article Lead Like a Gardener that appeared in Medium earlier this week. Management is notoriously faddish. Managers can reflect on a long line of management innovations that attracted huge attention, were widely … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged adaptive, agile, Cartesian mindset, CEO Theory of Mind, Champy, complex systems, Davenport, design thinking, ecological perspective, identity, leadership, management fads, means and ends, Michael Hammer, social movement | Comments Off on Lead Like a Gardener! – Agile and Design Thinking Will Become Management Fads Unless We Expand Our Concept of Management

Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?

This was the question posed recently on the Wisdom Research Network of the University of Chicago by James L. Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor, Emeritus at the Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University. He continued: “Servant leadership is an age-old … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Leadership | Tagged Adam Grant, First Industrial Revolution, Give and Take, Herman Miller, James L. Heskett, Lao-Tzu, leadership, Mary Parker Follett, Max de Pree, power-over, power-with, Quakers, Robert Greenleaf, servant-leadership, ServiceMaster, Taoism, wisdom | 5 Comments ← Older posts