What Leaders Pay Attention to Influences Culture One assumes that if you are a business leader that can testify to any sort of business success, you cannot be the sort of person that “switches off” every evening, over weekends or whilst on annual holiday. One assumes that the time you are thinking about and reflecting
The attainment of strategic intent ultimately depends on robust execution, which in turn is largely influenced by an organisation’s ability to access a sustainable supply of the best possible leaders both now and in the future. Confronted by continued economic pressure, increasingly competitive markets, and escalating stakeholder scrutiny of their leadership bench-strength, a growing number
Can Organisational Culture combat workplace Racism? I recently attended an HR Community, co-hosted by Mindcor and the SABPP, where HR professionals tackled the topic of “Racism in Society, Social Media and in the Workplace 2016”. The past few months have highlighted the fact that we continue to face ongoing elements of racism in South African
As South Africans we live in a world of abundant paradoxes, from politics to sport to business, you name it. A paradox, also referred to as incongruity, is defined as a statement or proposition which, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems logically unacceptable or self-contradictory. As
Why Engineers Trained 20th Century Managers and Social Scientists Develop 21st Century Leaders (Part 2) In Part 1 of this article we explored the shift in thinking and style of leaders from the 20th century to today. Whilst engineers and the ideas of commercialisation and mass production drove the changes in the previous century, today’s
The 20th century saw the explosion of manufacturing, mass production and the commoditisation of many products and services. This was based on the advent of strong engineering capability that enabled mass production, driven by an ever increasing focus on economies of scale. This mass production drove down price and made a plethora of goods and
Executive remuneration, compared to the value they create, is a contentious issue. The risk is greatest when taking on a new hire as you are paying for potential performance based on prior performance, which is not a 100% predictor of future performance in a new role. Having the right strategy for each critical hire is
I sometimes wonder for how long CV’s will remain to be the ubiquitous instrument to market new talent to prospective clients. The CV is a rather cumbersome, limited, single-dimensional and, quite often, a misrepresentation of the candidate – especially executive candidates, who have a diverse and multi-faceted career history. Various companies are testing different approaches
A lot has been written on the difficulty or limited success of business strategies being effectively implemented. Research indicates only 30 to 40% of strategies are successfully executed. In fact the success of business leaders is not based on how good their strategies are, but rather on how well they have been executed. People Deliver
As we, in the southern hemisphere, look forward to our well-earned summer holiday and, we have some down-time from our frenetic and fast-paced daily lives, it is typically a good time to reflect. Are we in the right job? Will my current role serve me to build my career? As a general rule, we find
