Un-Leadership lessons from a lip-sync street rerformance. An artistic, collaborative experience in 7 songs.
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What will be the same about work, the workforce and the workplace 10–15 years from now? What will be different?
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Demonstrating engagement, being engaged for a cause... Engaging others, mobilizing people for a certain goal... how far should we go? Can we talk about over-engagement? My piece for Inflexions, the French army review.
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“Celine’s work has been a major influence as we have developed Oscar Kilo the National Police Well Being Service, which now serves 200,000 police officers & staff…”
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If work is to become widely automatized, jobs to be replaced by machines and algorithms… then is human engagement at work a waste of time? Thoughts about people engagement in a tech-driven world.
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What is the actual impact of change agents on corporate culture change? Some reflections on change and agency, inspired by the Berlin Change Days.
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Our individual and collective responsibility to bring about positive change is immense. But how do we do? My contribution to an event on Community Building & Change Management organized at the International Committee of the Red Cross.
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What is corporate activism? I believe it is broader than “companies taking a stance on social issues” and it has the potential to propel organizations, people and society at large into a more positive future.
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Is shop floor the blind spot of leadership? I asked my colleague Bill Murray how he and his team managed to achieve exceptional results on the manufacturing shop floor.
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How do we do quality? Through processes and exhortations? Or by putting the human at the center of the system, and empowering them to improve it continuously? The pharma industry has misunderstood Edwards Deming for 30 years, but can catch up. An article co-written with Anders Vinther, Chief Quality Officer for Sanofi Pasteur.
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At Sanofi Pasteur, employees contribute their quality improvement ideas using Yammer. Read how much time and money the company is saving as it produces more life-saving vaccines. A customer success story published by Microsoft.
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What if Agile was more than a process, a method? What if the logical progression from method to outcome was not the reality in most companies? Let's talk about change activism instead. This blog post was originally published on Hack & Craft News
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After 10 years exploring the world, growing through unusual jobs, connecting deeply with strangers, I experienced a cultural shock when I joined a large, old, scientific company. First, I tried to cope. Then, I tried to change a few things. It didn't always work as hoped, but it was definitely instructive.
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It’s been a blast. A year has passed already since I’ve started getting involved in an amazing people-centric transformation project. Now is a good time to look back and reflect on the progress that happened, what remains to be done, and what I’ve learnt along the way.
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Volunteers decide by themselves. They can say no. That’s why “volunteer” is a rarity in the corporate world, that loves nothing more than orderly management of resources. Yet, they bring invaluable energy and ideas... provided organizations learn to mobilize and leverage volunteers. Here is an example, taken from an on-going movement for quality improvement. Based on Kotter's 8-Step for leading change, it is about enabling massive volunteerism to help the organization improve.
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Want to wreck the atmosphere of a friendly dinner? Speak "industrial quality". Explain how compliance, deviation tracking and process books are important. It's only minutes before the first guest starts yawning and stretching. Yet, I'm moving to Quality, and I'm thrilled. It's an overwhelming challenge. How to transform an old industrial culture, with Quality as a catalyst for change? How to engage employees into making quality products? How to make Quality exciting?
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How do traditional, regulated industries cope with social engagement? In my previous post, I have explored the reasons that hold those industries back from becoming truly social, taking Pharma as an example. Here, I am suggesting a few ways to seize the business potential of social engagement. May this post inspire curiosity and action.
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Adoption is the pain point of social enterprise. While adoption rates linger at staggering low levels, critical success factors are endlessly identified, dissected and commented.
Among those is the “top management support”, often seen as the key to success. But is it really? Is it true that, to succeed, social initiatives must have a high level champion, possibly the CEO? Can a company become social if it hasn’t got its Michael Dell, a Chief Social Officer, or at least highly convinced top executives?
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Large companies are going through challenging times, both from a business and organizational standpoints. These turbulences are hitting in a particular way old, large corporations because of their limited appetence for change.
Top-down / hierarchical / controlling and risk-avoidance company cultures but also lack of diversity in executive teams, intense competitive and financial pressure for short-term results, an increasingly complex legal and regulatory environment and stringent procedures for products development & production, are all contributing to the situation. Employee disengagement is reaching worrying levels, as if the current work environment didn’t provide the motivational aspirations and perspectives it did in the past.
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