In a minute or two of trawling around LinkedIn you will be amazed at the great men who all sing the praises of failure: from Churchill to Michael Jordan; from Kennedy to Henry Ford; from James Joyce to Abraham Lincoln. On the other hand, you won’t read much about Joe Dorn, a baker in Pocatello, […]

We remember the sixties as a time of major worldwide controversies and changes. Eastern Europe had its Iron Curtain; Vietnam was caught in an endless war. In America people were battling for civil rights; France was giving up its African colonies. And in Nanterre it was finally legal for boys to go into the girls’ […]

“I want to have at least some control over what I do and where I do it!” “How in the world do I fit into the big picture?” “I don’t even have the freedom to do what I’m supposed to do!” Isn’t this what the people in our organizations are demanding from their companies today […]

At the heart of the future… I invited Melissa, a senior expert from an international high technology company, to dinner four months ago. I’d always thought it was exciting to be at the heart of something that could make the difference in our developed countries: not economies of scale, not doing more with less, but […]

One o’clock in the morning. The crowd thinned out from the bar. I was putting my sax back in its box, after a few hours of jamming with the band, and it suddenly struck my mind how similar my musician and my consulting life can be (although with jazz, you get to bed later!). As […]

I’m struck by the fact that some companies still send people to key positions abroad without ensuring they have the skills to survive in a totally different world and be successful. Of course it often doesn’t work. And the mistake is hugely expensive. Making it internationally takes a whole lot more than making the numbers […]

“We want all our leaders, around the world, to align around a single set of leadership behaviors… as of Monday, if possible. Anyway, our leadership profile is on the intranet. So it should work”. Alignment!  Metaphors are what they are. Let me try one. Wandering in a newly replanted patch of forest is basically moving […]

Overheard in the company restaurant the other day where two regional HR managers were having lunch: “Here we go again. Another questionnaire we have to ask people to fill in. It seems like we just had one to fill in a while ago. We’ve got so much to do, who has time for this? And […]

A few years of providing 360° Leadership Feedback to our clients, we have discovered that you can get all sorts of reactions, from extreme denial on the one hand to authenticity and discovery on the other. The one thing that can make the difference is the quality of the feedback, and this depends on the […]

Welcome Y’s! “I thought it was a good idea for my mom to come to this interview with me.” The Netherlands, 2009. The recruitment manager in this large organization can’t believe his ears. The candidate who was just introduced into his office for an interview has not come alone. His mother is with him! “Well, […]