Wednesday, February 25, 2009
An improbably small, resource-poor island-state unleashed stunningly powerful military force across vast stretches of sea and shore, bringing vast swathes of the planet’s largest continent under occupation and delivering a staggering blow to its strongest nation. This state’s leadership produced brilliant campaigns executed with lightening speed and unprecedented efficiency. It was inexhaustibly energetic and vibrant, leading in technology, focus, will, and, inevitably, morale. It appeared unstoppable. But it had what turned out to be a fatal weakness. . .
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
How do we run our businesses, and how do they interact with their markets? A recent WSJ editorial cartoon has a manager reporting back to the CEO on the results of a new initiative: “Productivity is up twenty percent since your picture was installed on our screen savers.” And Murat Yetkin, a Turkish columnist, yesterday made an interesting comparison between the fall in 1991 of an “oppressive socialism unconcerned with people” and what he sees as the collapse today of “a spoiled, aggressive type of capitalism which ignores human concerns.” Is that what’s going on? Are we just swinging from one extreme to the other in a competition over how best to exploit workers and consumers? Let’s take a brief look . . .
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
When presented with a problem a common response is to rush to action. Drill right in to a solution and then move on. But that is often the wrong thing to do. It certainly is when considering something as vital as organizational design. . .
Vision is closely related to purpose, which we discussed yesterday. But while purpose is fundamentally utilitarian, telling us what we are doing now, vision is forward-looking, struggling to discern how and where we will be doing it in the future. . .
The commonly offered functions for leadership often seem to merely serve as glib introductions to the particular corner of the niche-riddled leadership market that any particular guru wishes to draw us in to. But underneath all the smoke generated by the leadership industry, there has to be some fire; there has to be some real purpose that leadership serves. . .
One of the wealthiest business families in the world recently hosted an event to which they invited some of the management field’s leading thinkers. The post-event PR material, to show just how cutting-edge this gathering was, included a slide from the presentation of one of these gurus; it went something like this . . .
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Remember that saying from the old mafia movies? Both sides knew and accepted that events had developed to the point where one wiseguy was going to have to deal with another. Nothing personal. Just business. Over the past two days we have reviewed the preparation and conduct of a negotiation that popped up regarding the organization of a prominent speaker’s inclusion at a conference. . .
