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, […]

When I open the paper, here’s what I read: Volkswagen is surreptitiously warming the planet. HSBC is laundering money from dubious sources. Servier is making money off of a health risk. The Carlton offers room service that goes way beyond the mini-bar. A minister, self-styled tax-avoiding Savanarola, proves to be overly fond of Swiss and […]

The Europe of past centuries knew all about cementing alliances. Royalty and nobility married their children into one another’s families. Love had little to do with it compared to the political challenges and the future of peoples who were all too often at war. The goal was peace: durable, fruitful peace between heretofore enemies. Sometimes […]

I’d like to start a conversation about gender issues in business. And in particular, why there seems to be a belief out there that women need so much special, “only-for-women” support in order to be successful leaders. When I read articles and look at the content of all sorts of courses aimed at women in […]

A quoi donc doivent ressembler les leaders de demain? Bonne question. Et beaucoup de nos clients se la posent. Confrontés à la complexité, la diversité, à l’incertitude grandissantes du monde actuel et au changement de génération, ils s’interrogent sur ce qui pourrait contribuer à bâtir un socle culturel solide et cohérent. Et quoi de plus […]

Slogans of the times are always meaningful. There is an old French saying: “Literature always develops in the cracks of societies”. In other words, we talk a lot and write a lot about our unfulfilled aspirations. When it comes to management, today’s word is “agile”. Organizations should be agile in order to adapt to an […]

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 […]

To pass the storm, your team must hold together! End of a stunning year and heading to uncertainty. The right moment to prepare for the 12 months to come: aim at high performance with an engaged team, make use of your team experience, business opportunities and be well equipped to affront potential difficulties ahead. As […]

Like mergers, acquisitions and other forms of strategic alliances, international joint ventures (IJV’s) are growing fast. Like these other alliances, failure rates are high. And like in these other forms of market entry or growth, while the business must become global, management and people remain culture-bound, if not local. It’s a new corporate culture In […]

Cooperation – everybody’s talking about it, but who actually does it? “We’ve been talking about adopting a horizontal and cooperative approach for a long time,” a branch manager of a French group based in South America told us. “Cross-selling, cooperation, working horizontally, exchanging best practice, managing change, joint development sometimes even with a competitor—no one […]