Amel Karboul

Today’s crisis has a major characteristic: no body knows what is going to happen in the future. From a philosophical view – we never knew what is going to happen, but we could at least pretend to know in the past.

7 years ago I did write an article on communities of practice as a powerful organizational form and intervention – after many frustrating experiences with an IT approach to knowledge management. In today’s environment they may become very useful. It is vital for every organization, in complex or even chaotic situations with many unknowns, to develop a leadership community that exchanges information, knowhow, views, and scenarios and stays alert to what is happening. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s finance and somehow also world crisis is challenging for many leaders. The tools they have learned, the experiences they have made are no longer helpful. Reading the newspaper every morning, you find tons of reports about top manager who are paralyzed with fear, even panicking, mainly because they just do not know what to do. They do not know what impact their decisions will have. To put it in a nutshell they lost all CONTROL!

Today’s situation is not just complicated or complex – it is chaotic. The turbulence is extremely high; there are no cause-and effect-relationships – so no point for looking for right versus wrong answers. The number of unknowable is increasing and everybody is under pressure to make decisions but we all lack time to think. Which results in high tension, pressure and even burn out. It is however a great chance to learn. I do not want to sound sarcastic, but we – as systemic consultants and researcher in the field – are preaching since many years that leading in complex and chaotic situations will become the norm and that leaders should start practicing. Today you can start. How? Read the rest of this entry »

I am reading the book of Carly Fiorina, Tough Choices: A Memoir. Actually I am listening to it since a dear friend made me a gift of the CD’s. Carly Fiorina herself is the speaker. She talks about her whole carrier and about her time as HP CEO. I am impressed by the openness and details of different events. Almost every story includes a leadership lesson. For every person working in the corporate world, this book is probably reassuring since you discover that not only you has these weird corporate craziness experiences but that is totally normal!!!

One lesson I liked very much is when she says: “Any structure, even one that it awkward and unwieldy,  can work with enough alignment and teamwork”. I used this immediately within a client project. The head of R&D wanted to restructure the whole department. So I interviewed him about his management team: how aligned are they? and also about the level of collaboration and teamwork. He discovered that he needs to work on these issues and spend his energy and the commitment of his employees on increasing alignment and collaboration instead of wasting a lot of energy and focus during a big reorganization. If after all efforts he still believed it needs reorganization – than yes, he can still do it.

common sense but not common practice

Video-impressions of a “change leadership” presentation for a top executive team and some of the slides (pdf download!)

common sense but not common practice