Insights

The phrase "culture eats strategy for breakfast" is often attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker, and it suggests that an organization's culture is more powerful than its strategy in determining its success or failure. However, the idea can also be applied to organizational structure. An organization's culture can have a greater influence on how the organization operates than its formal structure. This means that, even if an organization has a well-designed structure

Everyone feels a certain way about emotions. Some people fully subscribe to them and describe themselves as being emotional beings. Others may go to the opposite side of the spectrum and believe they’re just “not emotional.” We usually tend to think of emotions as being good or bad, positive emotions and negative ones. We know we like to feel “happy” and “joyful,” which we usually classify as positive emotions, while we don’t usually like feeling “anxious” or “angry,” which w

A company’s culture is its soul. It is what gives the company its life and shapes the experiences people have within and with the organization. But can culture be architected? Can it be changed? To answer these questions, let us look at the example of a client of ours which is a multimillion-dollar global corporation. A few years back, they decided to expand their business into complementary markets. To support this decision, they acquired another large business. The CEO of

I was recently in conversation with a former client of mine who had left his previous employer after 15 years with the company. While there were a number of factors behind his decision to leave, one that stood out for me was when he shared that he had no longer felt appreciated at his last company. He had been burning the midnight oil for months on end to get a critical initiative completed for the company and did not even get a simple thank you from the senior management. I

The word “Conflict” can make many people uncomfortable (squirmish even). And that is understandable! In our society, the word conflict comes with a lot of negative connotations. It is what we have been conditioned to avoid versus embrace. However, conflict, and specifically productive conflict, is a very healthy part of team development. Teams who engage in productive conflict, far out-perform those that avoid all types of conflict, at all costs. This was especially highlight

Life as we knew it pre-pandemic has been completely flipped over its head. Our routines and structures have been dismantled. The pace of change and disruption that our communities, organizations and we as individuals have experienced over the past decade is unprecedented. And the thing about change is that even when it is positive, it involves loss. This is more so the case when the change is disruptive, unexpected, or worse unwanted. When we let change overwhelm us, its st

From building trust to gaining alignment to influencing and navigating change , each one of these outcomes depends on the ability to communicate effectively. On the other hand, the cost of poor communications can be significant for the business. According to a study done by Salesforce, 86% of employees and executives cite the lack of effective communications as the main cause for workplace failures. The ability to communicate effectively and with impact is more critical than

The most critical component of growing a business is ensuring that you have the right leadership talent to support the goals of the organization and the maturity stage it is in. For example, in the early stages of a company the CEO and the executive leadership team need to focus on understanding customers, designing products and services, and selling solutions to the market. However, as the company stabilizes its growth, the leadership needs to prioritize building the intern

The ugly secret, not so secret truth about designing organizational structures is that many organizational design/redesign efforts fail. Most do so because there is a lack of understanding of what the organization truly needs and what motivates people to do their best work. In other words, most organizational redesign efforts are embarked on with little effort to holistically understand the existing conditions, the vision for the organization and what truly is keeping the peo