The Fascination with Engagement - What are you Missing out on

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Employee engagement is in actual fact one of many outcomes of culture. It is not wrong to look at engagement - an individual level outcome of culture - it is just not enough.

Assholes, Jerks and Dickheads are people too

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There is worrying trend on LinkedIn and in the business media in general. The labelling of people into categories labelled Assholes, Jerks and Dickheads. Below are just a few reasons why I am worried about the increasing trend of talking about 'Assholes' in the workplace.

The Seven C's of Leadership

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The parallels to our journey as a leader are uncanny and there is a great deal of literature out there about what makes a great leader. Having worked with Australia’s top leadership teams and by leveraging Human Synergistics’ 40 years’ worth of culture and leadership data, I would like to share with you a few simple tips to guide you on your leadership journey.

The Good Oil

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A well-made engine can be a beautiful thing. Harnessed and maintained properly it creates output of incredible value for those who use it.

A key component of any engine is of course the material that keeps all of the distinct interlocking and overlapping parts moving – oil!

Change is coming, is your company ready?

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Change is coming. We do not work in the standardised, specialised and hierarchical workplaces of the past. By instilling flexibility, variety, a mission, and accepting the distribution of power within your organization, your culture will be innovative and future fit. You may even become a disrupter yourself.

Culture Change: What effective CEOs do

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Rightly or wrongly, CEOs are judged on everything they do as much as on everything they have not done. They are on stage 24/7 and are continually critiqued on their voice, their tone, their turn of phrase, their body language, what they have said, and how, as much as what they didn't say. While it is all part of the job description, being the one in charge has its burdens, is challenging and not for the faint hearted. All that judgment is a lot to deal with. So clarity of role and what 'effective' looks like in action is important.

When we have talked with the CEOs who have been successful at turning an organisation around culturally, we have observed that they share some common behaviours.

Culture Change - the CEO Challenge

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One of the awesome questions prompted by the blog was …"what do you do when it is the CEO who is the bad apple?" 

This is tough and while I don't have any "silver bullet" answers, I can share some practical wisdom drawn from the ‘school of life’ working with CEOs who might have been described as the ‘bad apple’ because they did not see the value of culture. In some instances the CEO got there and lifted the culture to another level; in other cases, we didn't get past the slide deck!

Changing culture - What CEO's regret

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Over the course of a decade in my work with Human Synergistics, I have interviewed a number of CEOs and written about their leadership and cultural journey.

Great Culture Requires More Than Leadership

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To have a great culture, great leaders are vital… but they are not sufficient.

KP'WHY' not KPI

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What gets measured get done. But it might not be getting done the way you want.