Archives
Crazy as a Grumpy Boss
This is a small inquiry into the nature and causes of the grumpy boss. At the same time I would like to add new name to my list of guru’s: Manfred Kets De Vries. This INSEAD professor is most famous for his research on what he claims to be ‘neurotic organizations’. Altogether he distinguishes five […]
Music and Management Consulting
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. Lao Tzu It pays to observe excellent artists at work in order to rediscover what excellence in business could be like. Excellence, as it turns out, is all about setting […]
The Nespresso Strategy
Whenever you kick-off a large scale organizational change initiative you are going to need people to sponsor it, to lead it and to execute it. In plain English: you will need to staff a project team with skilled people and you will be asking of them a more than average commitment and a considerable effort. […]
Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing
Dr Bruce Tuckman published his Forming Storming Norming Performing model in 1965. He added a fifth stage, Adjourning, in the 1970s. It is one of the few ‘evergreen’ theories on group dynamics that I know. And I am struck by its predictive validity each time I am involved in a largescale project. The biggest challenge […]
Stress is the Fever of Burnout
A few weeks ago I posted my thoughts on employee burnout and Dr. Beverly Potter was kind enough to post a comment. According to her it is a common misconception that stress causes burnout. As she continues: “Stress and burnout are not the same. Burnout is a kind of job depression and is caused by feeling […]
More Evidence on the HR-Gap
In this week’s article I’d like to address evidence of McKinsey to prove the point I made in one of my latest posts on HR (As you know: if a tiny consultant from Belgium tells you so, you can forget about it. But when ‘the’ McKinsey proves his point with worldwide survey results, well…) The […]
Monday Morning Mandate for HR VP’s
In previous articles I have made my point on why HR is not an agent of change and the miserable state HR is in nowadays. In this article I want to focus on what HR should be doing in order to get out of this isolation and into the value chain (*). More precisely, there are […]
Grumpy Boss and Burnout?
Some time ago I posted an article on burnout and just recently I shared my view on the causes and effects of grumpy bosses. Until now I only vaguely realized that both were related with each other, but since I used the car – engine – driver comparison as a metaphor the relationship is getting […]
Web 2.0 is a Major Organizational Change Accelerator
Yes that’s right. And if you don’t know what Web 2.0 (*) means this is your wake-up call. Last week McKinsey Quarterly published its global survey results on the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies. Four important observations come to the surface and all four of them are extremely important in the face of […]
Grumpy Boss or Turbo Manager?
Every once in a while I meet bosses and project managers who are very tired and extremely grumpy. You probably have met these kinds of managers too or maybe you are one of them.
