In a blog post earlier this year, I wrote about the value of productive narcissism for leaders in organizations, but also raised some questions about its dangers. In this blog, I want to focus on humility – a trait we often don’t associate with leaders, especially those larger-than-life leaders past and present. Even among CEOs, […]
Traditionalists (otherwise known as Matures or the Silent Generation), those born before 1946, are hard-working and detail-oriented. They are disciplined and like consistency and uniformity. They are stable and loyal, and, at work, they are concerned about healthcare and retirement benefits and possibly being discriminated against because of their age. Baby boomers, those born between […]
Professor Vijay Gavindarajan’s concept of reverse innovation – developing ideas in an emerging market and coaxing them to flow uphill to Western markets – is a powerful one. If you are familiar with his work, you will know that he cites many examples, especially at GE, where products such as a low-cost ECG machine were […]
In a recent coaching session I had with an executive I will call Henry, we reviewed the results of 360-degree feedback interviews I had conducted with over 12 of his stakeholders (e.g., his boss, direct reports, internal and external customers) as well as the results of an anonymous survey. Like many very successful managers, Henry […]
Lately, I’ve been reading a number of articles on the rise of so-called temporary organizations. While such types of teams have been around for a while (e.g., movie crews, emergency response teams), several related trends seem to be driving their prevalence. One is the reluctance of workers who get laid off to move elsewhere to […]
What do today’s employees have in common with “nationalists?” I recently attended a lecture by Anne Marie Slaughter, president of a think tank and former Princeton professor, who described the rise of nationalists in the U.S. and around the world. In her view, nationalists are citizens who seek sovereignty at the national level rather than […]
Who or what is a “bicultural” and how important is biculturalism for organizations? Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of Renault-Nissan, seems to be the quintessential prototype of a bicultural (or in his case, a multicultural). He was born in Brazil, moved to Lebanon when he was six with his Lebanese parents, went to university in […]
Several years ago, I was working with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to organize a task force of senior executives on a special short-term project. At the kick-off meeting, the CEO explained the purpose of the task force, why each of them was selected, and his expectations of the project. He was making […]
In his recent book “The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World of Decline,” Foreign Affairs editor Jonathan Teppermann lays out ten seemingly intractable problems that the world faces today, such as inequality, poverty, immigration, and Islamic extremism. and then proceeds to detail solutions that some countries and cities have implemented to address […]