When a Report Comes Back Full of Errors, Try This

It’s a familiar moment in professional services: A team member submits a client report. It’s late, sloppily formatted, and riddled with inconsistencies. You’ve already promised it to the client. And [...]

Theories of Motivation – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Motivation drives performance—but many leaders still operate with outdated or misapplied motivational theories. It’s time to rethink how we engage people. Here’s a breakdown of the most influential theories of [...]

Why Motivation is Not Enough

As the year comes to a close, many people set new goals—whether it’s getting fitter, improving their relationships, advancing their careers, or learning a new skill. But why do we [...]

A five-step approach to align employee and company values

  Why it matters 👉 Companies with aligned values have higher retention, better teamwork, better communication, more engagement, and thus better results. 👉 Many companies try to align values by [...]

Commitment ≠ Commitment

In an age of more and more home office and remote working, how can we ensure that employees behave autonomously and self-motivated in line with the organisation’s goals? By strengthening [...]

Why questions are more important than answers

[2 minute read] Questions are more important than answers because questions allow us to frame and guide our thinking and thus help us understand. Answers, of course, are also important, [...]

How can we change other people?

[6-minute read] The right question? Should one even try to change others? Is it legitimate to try to change others? Here is my personal opinion. There are many situations in [...]

Strategy lessons from a cycling tour

[3-minute read] Story I just returned from the traditional cycling vacation with my brother. Every year we rent an apartment in a nice location and go on daily cycling tours [...]

Insights from a two-day leadership workshop with 80 executives

[7-minute read] Story Last week I had the pleasure to participate as co-trainer in a two-day leadership workshop with 80 executives of a highly dynamic company. In this blog post [...]

Why you can’t motivate others by setting goals for them

[3-minute read] Why you can’t motivate others by setting goals for them Story When I was a teenager, my father wanted me to exercise more. So he gave me this [...]

Where to start when everything seems important?

[3-minute read] How do you decide what to do first when you feel you have too much to do in the available time? Story Last week I spent three intense [...]

What do marriages and long-term business relationships have in common?

[3-minute read] Here is a situation I have seen all too often, and it always saddens me when I see it happen. People who genuinely like each other and want [...]

80% of the effort in traditional onboarding training is wasted

[5-minute read] How artificial intelligence can help entrepreneurs turbo-charge knowledge transfer to new team members 30-second summary for busy leaders Once a business has reached product-market fit, entrepreneurs need to [...]

Why we procrastinate on our most important goals

Have you ever wondered why we procrastinate on actions needed to achieve our most important goals? One of the main reasons, I have found, is an unresolved conflict between goals [...]

Two habits of teams with high ownership and accountability

[3-minute read] Watch it on my YouTube Channel. Would you follow a leader without a plan? Of course not! Would you like to be surrounded by team members without a [...]

How to save time by making better team-based decisions

  You can tell how good someone is at making decisions by how much time they have.   Busy people spend a lot of time correcting poor decisions, so they [...]

Interview #6 – Thomas Gelmi – Why putting your customers first may not be such a good idea …

  Thomas Gelmi is a specialist for Personal and interPersonal. He gained his experience in human interaction leading cabin crews as a former Swissair maitre de cabin. Today he helps [...]

Interview #5 – Matthias Mölleney – How to increase trust and collaboration in leadership teams

Matthias Mölleney is a highly experienced HR professional and author of “Beyond Leadership”. Before founding is own company, PeopleXpert, Matthias held senior HR positions in Lufthansa, Swissair, Centerpulse and Unaxis. [...]

Interview #4 – Curt Blattner – A novel approach to achieve sustainable team performance

Curt Blattner is a former Nestlé exectutive and author of the book “The HEARTBEAT of EXCELLENCE – The Design of Changing Sustainably, the Swiss Way” In this interview you will [...]

Is now the time to stop planning?

“We can’t plan right now. Things are too uncertain.” If this is what you think right now, think again. But before you do, have a look at this 2-minute video [...]

Interview #3 – The human side of business – Insights from an entrepreneur in Vietnam

Mastering the human side of business – In this interview with Thomas Himmelrich, my entrepreneurial sparring partner based in Vietnam, you will hear things that are also relevant for entrepreneurs [...]

Recognising Good and Bad Strategies – Part 5

Coherent action is the third and maybe most important element of a good strategy. Unfortunately, many leadership teams, when then engage in a strategy process, call the strategic objectives [...]

Interview #2 – Giuseppe Conti – How to transition from corporate to independent

      In this interview with Giuseppe Conti, founder and managing partner of Conti Advanced Business Learning (CABL).Giuseppe has successfully managed to transition from corporate to entrepreneur. In this [...]

Interview #1 – Alain Depuydt – How to grow a business in a shrinking industry

This interview is first in a series of conversations we plan to have with business builders. The purpose of these interviews is to learn from successful entrepreneurs about their experiences [...]

Recognising Good and Bad Strategies – Part 4

The second element of a good strategy: The Guiding Policy This is the fourth article on our five-part series on Richard Rumelt’s book “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy” –> Hier clicken für [...]

Recognising Good and Bad Strategies – Part 3

The first element of a good strategy: The Diagnosis This is the third article on our five part series on Richard Rumel’s book “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy” –> Hier clicken für [...]

Recognising Good and Bad Strategies – Part 2

A bad strategy is not simply the absence of a good strategy, but rather a result of misconceptions and management deficits. The four characteristics of bad strategies are (1) Fluff [...]

Recognising Good and Bad Strategies – Part 1

A good strategy contains at least three elements: 1) diagnosis, 2) guiding policy and 3) coherent action. This is this the KERNEL of a good strategy. Just formulating revenue, profit [...]

Networking across countries

In this post written by Janet Shaner, you learn how to adapt your network for the country where you live / work Certain vs. uncertain business environments Did you know [...]

A Saturday morning habit that helps me be less stupid

  Photo by Frank Busch on Unsplash Story I recently started a new habit. Every Saturday, I go for a 60 to 90-minute walk. The trigger to this was reading [...]

Downwards disloyalty: An insidious threat

Collaboration is the glue every team or organisation employs to achieve sustainable high performance. Collaboration exists in many forms and guises, some of which are stronger and more effective than [...]

Public reprimanding is not a valid leadership tool

Photo by Photo Boards on Unsplash Human error and poor judgement are commonplace in business. When someone makes a mistake, it is often tempting to admonish them on the spot. [...]

“Men are not disturbed by things, but by their view of things” (Epictetus)

One could also say that people are not disturbed by things, but that they disturb themselves by holding rigid and extreme beliefs about things. Psychologist Albert Ellis said that rigid [...]

Caught in a monkey trap?

Apparently, people in India use a simple trick to capture monkeys. The trapper fastens a piece of cord to a tree. On the other end he attaches a coconut. The [...]

Team Contract – Building the foundations for constructive interaction

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash As coaches, we have a suitcase full of tools and are constantly developing new ones. However, if we were to talk about minimalism in [...]

Intuition and decision making

  Use your intuition for better decisions in uncertain situations Have you recently had to make a big decision such as taking a new job, hiring a new employee, starting or [...]

Make sure your conversations pay off with “Value-COIN”

You might already be familiar with the COIN acronym, which provides an easy-to-remember, four-step process to plan and structure constructive feedback conversations: CONNECTION – OBSERVATION – IMPACT – NEXT STEPS [...]

Managing in Meltdown

Multiple challenges arising at the same time can threaten the very existence of a start-up. Here are some tips for surviving a meltdown. For new organisations, survival is the first prerequisite [...]

Why Koalas are stupid and trees don’t need a brain

“Use your brain”, said one of the workshop participants when I asked about the kind of behaviour they would like to see in their company. “What do you mean?” I [...]

Choices and Decisions – Don’t confuse the two

October is a great time to review your choices and decision. But don’t confuse the two, because the two words mean different things. “We are our Choices”  – Jean Paul Sartre [...]

Wondering what to do next

  STORY I wrote this memo after a great family vacation, travelling down the North-West Coast of the US, and managed to completely disconnect. But back home, I found myself [...]