The Lab will be slowing down over the next few weeks. So, if you're reading this and you're still at your office, we're very sorry for you. If you're reading this and it is already 2008, we hope it will be a momentous 2008 for you. A very merry festive season to you all.
I’m currently reading Dan Brown’s novel Deception Point (not his best, but not a bad weekend read). I was struck by the motto of one of the characters - ‘Find the truth. Act on it’. My first thought was that this is such a simple statement, but with a lot of punch. If more leaders would adopt this as their personal ‘mission statement’ it would certainly have a great impact on the companies, countries, etc, that they’re supposed to be leading. Often, [...]
"I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism." ~ Charles M. Schwab We often conduct narrative based culture audits in organisations, and more often than not, one of the key patterns we find is negativity around leaders who don't acknowledge the effort of their employees. In South Africa, where skills shortages and high staff turnover create headaches [...]
I came across the following in one of Dave Snowden's articles that I haven't read for a while .. (it's quite long, so please bear with me!) "When people first become aware of the importance of narrative in organisational sense making, the often go through a stage when they think the best thing would be to tell stories in order to control the organisation or some issue. This belief is a swamp across which consultants must guide clients safely, because [...]
