Hope creep

Hope creep The R&D leadership of a large Integrated Oil & Gas Major struggled with this question at one of our recent workshops: “How do you end someone’s favorite project?” Large R&D and product development organizations need to balance a portfolio of innovations, and they constantly face trade-offs between different projects that look more or less promising […]

Creating followership

Creating followership This weekend, I had breakfast with a successful executive of one of the large Telecommunications firms. He had just completed the turnaround of an underperforming business unit. After years of gradually declining sales, the unit is growing profitably again. “I think I now know how to motivate the team against a goal,” he […]

Cascading the message down the line

Cascading the message down the line This week, two of our clients each asked the same question: “What are best practices for cascading a leadership message down the line? Somehow my message does not seem to arrive at the front line; it gets stuck in the middle.” One of the most frequent causes of failure […]

People believe what they say themselves​

People believe what they say themselves People generally believe what they say themselves. Strangely, they don’t believe what YOU tell them nearly as often. What implications does this have? Perhaps you can illustrate the point you want to make with a powerful story, rather than provide the facts and the argument of the case. Perhaps […]