Organisational Wisdom

Is your team running at full power? You mostly know what it feels like when things are going well. But how do you measure this - are things really as good as they seem, or is there room for improvement with your team? Based on a comprehensive data set of interviews with over 15,000 leaders, it's now possible to show what every leader can do immediately to improve their team's performance. The results might surprise you! It starts with asking yourself and your team the question, "are we running at full power?" What were the times in your career when things just clicked and what were the times when things felt clunky and hard? The research undertaken by Geoff Smart, Randy Street and Alan Foster (2015) found just three distinct groupings of strengths and competencies. Ask yourself these questions: Priorities Do we have the right priorities? Are they connected to the mission in a compelling way? Are they correct and likely to produce the right results? Are...

Leaders like to use their strengths to achieve quick, dramatic results; they like to believe they are as good as everyone says they are, and not take their weaknesses too seriously; they believe that some people are superior and some are inferior; they put their faith in talent; and they see themselves as "the smartest guys in the room". Sound familiar? Evidence from the Global Financial Crisis shows that when people work in an environment that esteems them for their innate talent, they have difficulty when their image is threatened; they won't admit they're wrong to peers and stakeholders, and they won't take remedial action. Ultimately a company that can't self-correct can't thrive. And the rest, as they say, is history! What's the alternative? The alternative is leaders with a 'growth mindset'. They believe in human development; they're not constantly trying to prove they're better than others; they don't highlight bein...

I've been working in and around leadership development for over 30 years and I was recently asked, "what's the best book on leadership?" I had to come up with an answer on the spot. I ran through corridors of books in my mind. But there are thousands of books on leadership, and thousands more published every year! Most fall into the category of "the [x] steps to success", or "I did it my way". A few are based on empirical research. If I had to come up with one book, which one would it be? No, I'm not going to sell you "my book". In fact, I'm not going to sell you anything at all. The one book that I recommend most to my executive coaching clients and to my wisdom in leadership program participants is... ..."The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz , first published in 1997. This amazing little book claims to derive from the wisdom of the pre-Aztec "Toltec" teachings of Mesoamerican culture dating back to 80...

Rather than be surprised by conflict we should be surprised when it isn't present. Conflict is everywhere. In fact, it's built into our commercial and civic institutions. "Democracy" and "free market" are based on conflict. But here's the catch, the skills for dealing with conflict are rarely taught. And our leaders mostly seem to promote conflict for their own ends. We need a new kind of leadership that acknowledges dealing with conflict and difference as a central goal. We need the leader as mediator to be able to: Improve increasingly diverse workplaces that are under global pressures to perform. Restore civility and collaboration in fractured communities and neighbourhoods. Re-energise the respect and vitality of our schools. Bring compassion back to the core of our health care systems. Foster a more policy-based, less personality-based political discourse. Generate a more open, curious and inclusive attitude toward difference more gene...

Winners are grinners. You're in it to win it. Go hard or go home. Eyes on the prize! So what happens when you live life at this frenetic place? You will only gauge your success relative to those around you. And if you're a leader - a frenetic leader - you will only want to drive your team to achieve results, to beat the competition, to win. This is the accepted imperative of business. And it's killing us! There is another way to run the human race. Not by being a frenetic leader, but by being a phronetic leader . Phonetic leaders embrace "phronesis" or practical wisdom, which is the virtuous habit of making decisions and taking actions that serve the common good. It is a capability to find the "right answer" in a particular context. Phronesis, acquired from experience, enables leaders to make good judgements in a timely fashion and take actions guided by values and morals. When leaders distribute this kind of knowledge within their organisations,...

H ow often have you heard people brag about what great multi-taskers they are? You might even consider yourself a great multi-tasker, particularly if you're a Gen Y. When we think we're multitasking we're actually multiswitching. That's what the brain is very good at doing - quickly diverting its attention from one place to the next. We think we're being productive. We are, indeed, being busy. But in reality we're simply giving ourselves extra work. So, what's the secret to multitasking? Research conducted at  Stanford University  found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time. Further, researchers at the  University of Sussex   in the UK compared the amount of time people spend on mu...

Why is the getting of success such a struggle, when everywhere we look, others make it seem so easy? "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something", said the man in Black to his one true love Buttercup in the classic 1981 movie The Princess Bride . No great success was ever achieved without pain. And to make the key changes in our lives - to shift from being worriers to warriors - takes effort, heroic effort. Just like the Native American story of the battle between the two wolves. One wolf is slothful, cowardly, vain, arrogant, and full of self-pity, sorrow, regret, envy, and anger. The other wolf is diligent, courageous, humble, benevolent, and full of compassion, joy, empathy, an faith. Which wolf wins the battle? The one you feed. Whether you feed your good wolf, your source of diligence and courage, or your bad wolf, your source of sloth and fear, is a daily choice, and in many cases a heroic choice. Here are five questions to cons...

"Patience, young grasshopper" is a quote from the 1970's Kung Fu TV series starring David Carradine as Kwai Chang Cain. His teacher, Master Po called him "grasshopper" as a child, emphasising patience as the ultimate martial arts skill. But we live in an era of high-speed, same-day, cutting-edge, first-to-market, fast-food, get-it-now, snap-judgement. If we're told we have to wait, we get irritated. If we can't come up with the right answer right away, we get upset. if someone or something gets in our way, we get angry. Why is patience considered one of the most powerful martial arts practices? Because patience is the antidote to anger, and anger represents the most terrible and destructive manifestation of self-driven desire. When we're angry with someone, we're estranged form them and from the true core of our being. We end up losing the very thing we believe we're fighting for. Patience is a discipline. It takes practice to over...

Groucho Marx famously said, "the secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made!" It's easy enough to acknowledge the benefits of ethical behaviour - in principle. But the practice of business, government, and community affairs is often at odds with what seems "right". The number 1 reason for ethical violations in business is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations. So how do you develop and sustain the ethical self-discipline to stand firm when all about you are bending? The second practice for living life wisely is the virtue of ethical self-discipline. There are three kinds of ethical discipline: 1.  The moral discipline of restraint from non-virtue , in particular: Do not kill - instead, support life in all its forms as much as possible. Do not steal - which means to not knowingly gain from another's misfortune or ignorance. Do not deceive - which means to be honest...

To live in the first quarter of the Twenty-First Century in any global city is to be plugged-in, relevant, and responsive. To be out-of-the-loop even on holidays can feel intolerable. How can you expect to lead a wise life when there's so much noise and disruption? There are 5 practices for living life wisely. The first of these is the gift of generosity. True generosity is giving everything you have to every moment without expecting any sort of return. But how can you seriously do that in a competitive, materialistic, narcissistic, me-first culture? Here's how: Getting Started Once you overcome an inbuilt protectiveness about your own survival and material wealth it's relatively easy to be generous. You can begin right now, where you are, to be more compassionate and giving to others in your thoughts, words, and deeds. If you continue this process, it quickly becomes apparent how good it feels and how valuable it is. The Remedy of Generosity When you look at it...

In these times when innocent people are slaughtered for "causing offence" we don't hear much about wisdom. When was the last time you heard a political leader stress the social importance of wisdom or speak about the need for more of it? Yet across time and cultures, wisdom has been viewed as our most reliable guide to action, a key to the advancement and integration of knowledge, and a principle human virtue linked to long-term fulfilment and wellbeing. For me, wisdom is the balanced use of reason, intuition and compassion to make and encourage good decisions that promote human flourishing. How can we cultivate wisdom? Here are six qualities you can practice to become wise. 1. Richness of Knowledge A wise person tends to have what Paul Baltes and colleagues call "an extensive database about life matters". He or she is also likely to have "rich procedural knowledge" - many different ways of thinking about problems and their possible solution...