A Golden Window of Opportunity

One of the main points that I make in my keynote speeches these days is that we are currently standing in the neutral zone between two distinct eras of leadership and management. The old era started in the early 1900s, as we ramped up the industrial age, and for the...

Backsliding is Normal

If you are out there actually changing your culture, then I need to prepare you for the inevitable. Well, maybe “inevitable” is too strong a word. But after you make progress moving in the direction of the desired culture, you are probably going to slide...

You Don’t Copy a Culture

Strategic moves can be copied, or at least emulated. We can study what other companies do strategically, and then copy, to some extent, their approach within our context. Strategies and the organizations they are attached to are complex things, so it’s not as an...

Starting the Conversation About Culture

Most organizations don’t talk about their culture too much. We’re too busy doing the work, and the culture sits in the background mostly. It’s how we do things here, but that doesn’t mean we need to talk about it. It is what it is. At some...

Knowing When to Turn the Auto-Pilot Off

One of the reasons I think so many organizations are stuck is that they have too much of management set on auto-pilot. There are too many things that we do in managing our organizations that are done automatically, without thinking, and without questioning. Think...

Developing a Culture of Innovation

Guest post, by Amanda Kaiser Kodak, once a $10 billion dollar company, failed. Just when they needed to innovate the most, they focused on optimization instead. Innovation and optimization are at either ends of the spectrum. It’s hard to do both. The most innovative...
Jamie Notter