Here’s an excerpt from my book, GameChangers–Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, on the future of the organization. Key phrases are my italics: Forces of Nature The old models are giving way today as surely as mountains give way to the elements. The citadels of the [...]
It’s good organizational practice to express stories in as many different media as possible, and by media I don’t mean the obvious platforms–video, audio, social, podcasts, press releases, books, memes, and what have you, though there’s nothing wrong with them, they’re [...]
Among the most-frequently heard complaints by employees, it doesn’t matter how large or small a company is–is that there are too many meetings. That meetings are too long. Involve too many people, many of whom spend most of the meeting distracted by texts and emails. That they don’t [...]
If you’re in a business communication role, it can be tempting to insist that your story is all good news. That is, after all, how we are trained as organizational storytellers. We know of companies that are forbidden by their leadership from bringing up issues that threaten the very [...]
In the early 1980s, there was a lot of talk about The Walt Disney Company being on its last legs. Most of this talk came from inside the company. Managers who’d been there 20 years or more were convinced that the Disney organization was going to fall apart on their Mickey Mouse watch. [...]
The Next Act for HR is the theme of our first 2016 conference. It will be a half-day experience in downtown Los Angeles that will look at the evolving organization, and HR’s changing role in it. The centerpiece of the event will be an immersive theater performance. Attendees will find [...]
Sarah Brennan, who has a popular HR Technology blog, recently wrote about the state of HR Tech in the wake of a downdraft in the LinkedIn stock price. Around the same time, I began hearing buzz around HR automation, which sounds, to my ear, like an oxymoron, like the work it does is turn [...]
From The Cluetrain Manifesto, which began steaming up in 1999, and has never been more on track than today: A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets [...]
A quantum story is to The Hero’s Journey what an orchestra is to a cello. Organizations produce stories like orchestras produce music. What we call ‘orchestral organizations’ have multiple conductors, and improvise their performance based on who’s in the audience and why. [...]
Our friend Paul Pedrazzi (@ppedrazzi) called our attention to this list by Jeff Jordan, Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen and Preethi Kasireddy of Andreeson Horowitz. It is comprised of “16 startup metrics.” The authors write that “good” metrics are “about running the [...]