Vol.14 Issue 01 – ’20: Leadership for a better future
Leadership for a better Future
We do not need to read journals or study research results to know that the world is changing rapidly. We just need to look around and see what is happening. Our lives are being transformed by technology, bringing with it some real benefits and many thorny problems. We are experiencing social change on a…
Read MoreRe-humanisation: Oh, we forgot
We have arrived in the digital age but we forgot the human factor in our businesses and business schools. How come when we talk about the one thing that makes all the difference in our businesses we talk about mindsets, emotions, passion, identity, purpose? The human factors, as we say. And how come when…
Read MoreThe Productive Leader – a new approach for the digital age
We need to create productive organisations by genuinely empowering employees and allowing them the freedom to choose how they work. We have spent the last 200 years building ever-more complex organisations. We have built up multinational empires blindly assuming that economies of scale are justifying the mega-corporations. Exciting, innovative, organisations have been bought by…
Read MoreThe Leadership Challenge of Talent Management
The context of business is undergoing a radical rethink or at least a questioning of the fundamentals. In particular, the role of the leader is being challenged to be more inclusive and to add some form of social responsibility to an already tough job description. Talent management is a key area where leaders are…
Read MoreBuilding Sustainability into the Value Chain
Running a “sustainable” business is not about recycling and tree-planting programmes, it’s about putting sustainability at the core of your shareholder value proposition. To achieve sustainability transformation in companies, leaders need a broader skillset. This means that management education thinking also needs to be transformed to address sustainable values. Is sustainability in business misunderstood?…
Read MoreLeadershift: Creating the innovation-ready organisation
There is perhaps no greater challenge for modern leaders than to protect their companies from the threats of the near-term future. Companies such as Woolworths, HMV, and Thomas Cook failed to meet the challenge of external threats. In contrast, companies building processes to import innovations developed outside of the organisation are maintaining their relevance…
Read MoreThe Future of Diversity and Inclusion: can leaders scratch beneath the surface?
We have recently seen the boom of chief diversity officer roles and teams, many within the HR and talent management portfolio. However, the reason leaders find it hard to make the kind of benefits that can accrue from diversity and inclusion is that they only scratch the surface, most looking at measuring the main…
Read MoreTomorrow’s Leaders
Everything you always wanted to know about motivating the next generation but might have forgotten to ask. Are we listening to the needs and concerns of our talented professionals who will soon be tomorrow’s leaders? Seven young professionals talk about how they see leadership today, what needs to change and how they would do…
Read MoreAre business schools doing enough to prepare students, the workforce and potential business leaders for a sustainable future?
What do you mean by a “sustainable future”? A sustainable future is one where the demands on the business leaders of our highly complex and interlinked world will be reconciled with the demands of “new” citizens (among them the Millennials and their successor generations – many of whom might indeed be business leaders in…
Read MoreEngaging with Technology
Why this time around is different Getting computers to do our bidding has always been a bit mysterious to those of us not steeped in machine code, operating systems, and programming. We were content, if that is the right word, to muddle through command-line interfaces (CLIs) and then GUIs (graphical user interfaces), the ones…
Read MoreThe Apocalypse of Leadership
We are in a parlous state and we need a new cohort of leaders to regain people’s belief and faith in the system. Capitalism is believed to be the system that best provides the wealth necessary to lift the standard of living for all people. Yet in the developed world, it is far from…
Read MoreAuthentic and Respectful Leadership
Leaders of the future who underestimate the importance of “respect” as a central element of their culture do so at their peril. Leadership culture will be the biggest single influence on organisation performance and success. Without appreciation and respect for other people, leaders will struggle to be effective. Business leaders today face pressure for…
Read MoreThe trouble with learning…how fear holds us back, and what we can do about it
The trouble with learning is that it requires us to acknowledge that we don’t know enough. Even worse, learning means we’re very likely to have to change something we don’t think needs changing. And, together, these truths scare us. They go against our nature and admitting to either is, at the very least, socially…
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