Today 100 years ago, the first world war ended. A conflict with hundreds of thousands of casualties. The Great War, as it was known before there was a second conflict, still fascinates us. Apart from all the historical analyses I have a question about motivation. Why did soldiers fight during World War 1? What was their motivation to leave the trenches across the front and be maimed and slaughtered?Read More
A year has gone by since I have left the company I had worked for for 11 years. Many people thought I had married that company as I felt and behaved like an ambassador, representing it with passion in the outside world. And in many ways this organisation defined who I was, or who I had become.Read More
Companies seem to have (re)discovered the customer. You might think that companies can never forget to focus on the customer. I can tell you, they do.
Tensions at the top of an organization are not rare. Sometimes they are fruitful. But sometimes they are detrimental. They all have to do with power and collaboration. If we would see Governance more as a kind of collaboration rather than a kind of steering, we could solve many of the unproductive tensions.
During the reunion of the executive education alumni of the London Business School I had the pleasure to co-moderate one of the workshops. The topic was how to navigate continuous change. About 20 international executives exchanged their experiences. Here are the key learnings.
A merger is the integration of two organizations into one. The reasons to do so are numerous: economies of scale, industry capacity reduction, growth, acquisition of know-how … But the data are impressively dramatic. Most mergers fail and destroy value. One of the main reasons is because there is not enough focus on cultural compatibility.Read More
Performance Management needs to be fair. Here’s why and how.
Many organisations want to become agile. But there’s more to agile than methods.
The ultimate strategic question is how can we be unstoppable?
The future of strategy is a strategy fully focussed on customers.