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Category: Blogs

  • Meta-strategies for 21st Century Leaders

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    Yin and yang strategy Strategy is a dance between “hard” approaches, which set direction, plan, and persevere, and “soft” approaches which sense, respond, and flex.  Lots of writing on strategy maintains one is better than the other, rise and fall like hemlines with “soft” strategies currently in vogue (emergent strategy, adaptive strategy, lean strategy, discovery-driven…

  • 7 Myths and Cognitive Biases that Might be Killing Your Career?

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    Helping people find careers they love sometimes means helping them get out of their own way.  These seven career myths and cognitive biases are the most damaging. Which might be getting in your way? This summary of career myths is from Reboot Your Career, co-authored with Tim Ragan, and available end-September 2016.  The article first appeared in…

  • Is Pursuit of Happiness Making You Miserable?

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    The happiness disease? The idea that happiness is the most important goal in life has a lot going for it. Philosophers, Eastern and Western, from John Stuart Mill, to the Buddha, testify to its importance. Visit the psychology section of your local bookstore and every second title, it seems, is about happiness. I’m going to…

  • Thirteen 21st Century Career Megatrends – and What You Should Do About Them

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    Don’t wake up a dinosaur The rules of work, employment, and career are vastly different from those of a quarter century ago, and “players” (people managing their careers) have to learn the new rules.  As a career-minded professional, you must stay on top of trends that could affect your employability, or income in a few…

  • Are All of Us Really Smarter Than One of Us?

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    Don’t confuse group wisdom with the madness of crowds “All of us is smarter than one of us” is a nice-sounding aphorism. It is the sort of platitude that gets thousands of retweets and shares, while making the proclaimer sound like a team player: immensely humble, and up-to-date with their management reading. But pithy feelgood phrases such as this get in…

  • Stop Treating Business Gurus as Prophets. Question Everything!

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    In no domain that I can think of, do writers get a “free pass”, that is that their words are taken as axiomatic (or gospel if you prefer).  Even the most famous scientists of the 20th century, Einstein, Turing, Watson (DNA), lived with a torrent of criticism and debate through their lives. Certainly our time…

  • Time to Euthanize Change Management?

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    If we had leaders at every level… Imagine an organization filled with leaders at every level who excelled at aligning staff with change strategy. Key change programs become priorities for them, they work hard at understanding the big picture, handle conflict assertively, yet gracefully, motivate and align staff, communicate with affected stakeholders (say customers), skillfully…

  • Is pop psychology bad for business?

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    In my upcoming book, I present some ideas that risk being controversial. They relate to leading change, and whether the “pop psychology” that circulates in the change and leadership worlds is harmful, or helpful, to understanding and leading people. I also introduce the idea of “pop leadership”, soundbite style leadership wisdom, and ask whether that…

  • Do we need to redefine “change strategy”?

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    “Tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war.” (Von Clausewitz, On War) Are change strategy frameworks strategic enough? What is commonly called change strategy is not very strategic, because strategy properly focuses on goals, and tactics on how to deliver them. Many…

  • Top 20 Change Management Myths

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    Paul Gibbons
    in

    Why does change fail? With change failure rates hovering around 50% (according to the most recent surveys from McKinsey and IBM), we must wonder why. In The Science of Successful Organizational Change, I try to challenge some of the orthodox beliefs about change – for example, that metaphors such as “freezing” and “unfreezing” are apt,…

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