Looking around other people's blogs I find that those with a personal touch that tell a story seem, to me to be more inviting. So I've decided to experiment with that format for a month or so. (I know I need to take another look at the page layout but that is in hand).
So today began with reading the first part of Chapter 7 Dynamics in Organizational Culture, of the Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation. Mary Jo Hatch, the author of that chapter, is someone whose work I've been interested in for a while. She writes clearly and has ideas which are almost actionable in the corporate world – at any rate they spark off ideas that are. This time her argument is around the tension beween dynamic and stable organization culture. I didn't finish the whole chapter because my tolerance for academic writing, however good, has dwindled to the length of time it takes me to drink a (large) cup of tea. I'll continue reading it tomorrow morning.
With the spark of an idea from the chapter in mind I finished off a proposal to a client on redesigning the leadership succession and pipeline process in (more or less) the absence of any potential leaders. It seems that every corporate is chasing an ever-dwindling supply of people they would consider to be leadership material. Thinking differently about leaders – who they are, where they come from, and what constitutes a leader might make all the difference and radically extend the pool of possibilities. So, that is what I suggested (with actions on how to do this).
I then added to my Amazon wish list the Handbook mentioned above and noted that the list is now at 206 items which will take a lot of tea drinking to get through. Unnervingly Amazon's algorithms seem to have me down pat as their recommendation for me today was The Character of a Corporation: How Your Company's Culture Can Make or Break Your Business which was also recommended to me a week or so ago (not by Amazon but by someone who knows I'm writing a book on organization culture). What I found fascinating though was why "People who bought this book" also bought Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink. I couldn't see the connection but then I'm not a mindless eater – to avoid becoming one my fridge contains nothing but some milk and half a lemon (back to the tea motif).
Naomi Stanford 