Tag Archives: metaphor

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

Cattle, Slaves and Automobiles: Driving Dangerously With Management Clichés

Language is rooted in metaphor. In their popular book, Metaphors We Live By (1982) George Lakoff and Mark Johnson showed the pervasive role that our embodied experience plays in our understanding of how the world works, or might work. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Cartesian, causality, change, complex systems, creativity, George Lakoff, Gilbert Ryle, innovation, language, Mark Johnson, metaphor, Newtonian | Comments Off on Cattle, Slaves and Automobiles: Driving Dangerously With Management Clichés

Disrupting Disruption Theory [Part I]: Storm in a Modernist Teacup

A recent article in the New Yorker by Harvard history professor, Jill Lepore is creating quite a storm in management circles. In it she takes Harvard Business School’s Clayton M. Christensen to task for sloppy methods in the derivation and … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged analogical, business process reengineering, Clayton Christensen, community, disruption, Faustian bargain, Harvard Business School, innovation, instrumental rationality, Jill Lepore, machine, mechanical, metaphor, Mormonism, Silicon Valley, STEM | Comments Off on Disrupting Disruption Theory [Part I]: Storm in a Modernist Teacup

Exploring The Ecology of Leadership: the Power of Analogical Thinking

I spent the past week in California working with a senior management team from a large global corporation as part of their extensive executive development program. This was my third time with the same organization and I had worked hard … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abduction, alignment, analogical thinking, analogy, change, choice, commitment, complex systems, creativity, crisis, direction, ecocycle, ecological perspective, executive development, image, leadership culture, Leadership Metaphor Explorer, metaphor, narrative, The New Ecology of Leadership, Visual Explorer, wicked systems | Comments Off on Exploring The Ecology of Leadership: the Power of Analogical Thinking

Exploring Leadership Using Metaphors

Last week I spent a day-and-a-half with a group of senior managers from a large global company discussing leadership. The company faces all the challenges one might expect it to face – globalization, digitization, cross-cultural difficulties and so on in … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged budget, CCL, Chuck Palus, David Horth, ecological perspective, financial forecasting, Leadership Metaphor Explorer, mental model, metaphor, performance management, The New Ecology of Leadership, Visual Explorer, VUCA | Comments Off on Exploring Leadership Using Metaphors

Watch Your Language! Why Metaphors Matter in Management

It’s another launch of another strategic plan to the company’s senior and middle managers and the CEO is rattling on about “roadmaps” and “blueprints” that will generate “traction” in the market and “buy-in” from the employees. The employees are watching … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Aristotle, blueprint, buy-in, change, ecological perspective, ecological rationality, embodied cognition, Gareth Morgan, George Lakoff, Gibson Burrell, Mark Johnson, metaphor, roadmap, Thomas Kuhn, top-down | 1 Comment

Renewing Rome Part III: The Future is the Means – the Present is the End

Last week I took an ecological perspective on Pope Francis and his efforts to renew the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). His chosen role of prophet (rather than the other two religious offices of priest and king) is to bring passion … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged analogy, bureaucracy, change, community, context, ecocycle, Fritz Roethlisberger, leadership, metaphor, narrative, Pope Francis, renewal, Roman Catholic Church | Comments Off on Renewing Rome Part III: The Future is the Means – the Present is the End

Management and the Limits of Logic

I grew up in a middle-class English household that was not very intellectual. As a child I was cautioned against ever discussing religion, politics or money round the dinner table. As I grew older, I discovered that these were the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged America, Berlin Wall, capitalism, communism, contradiction, David Hume, ecological rationality, emotion, Jonathan Haidt, Kahneman, limits of logic, metaphor, paradox, Plato, rationalism, rationalist delusion, reason, rider an elephant, Soviet Union, Stalin, The New Ecology of Leadership, The Righteous Mind, Thomas Jefferson, Tversky | Comments Off on Management and the Limits of Logic