Tag: english

What to do if one of your teammates is giving you inappropriate comments based on your gender or sexual orientation?” – I got this question from Kate – a friend of mine, while celebrating my brother’s graduation. Kate seemed to be upset and tired of dealing with a person at her workplace, who was disrespectful towards her and others. “We are an agile organization and thanks to this we should never experience such discriminative situations.

For quite a long time the thinking and practice of management was dominated by a rather rationalist approach. The feelings and energies of individuals and teams were by far left aside. The professional behaviour was one of emotional self-control and composure. The humanist approaches of 1960s, including Human Relations and Organizational Development, brought the human motivations back into the managerial consideration. More recently, the concept of the organizational energy was pioneered by Bernd Vogel (University of Reading, UK) and Heike Bruch (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland). In their take, organizational energy is the driving force behind all business actives that involve individuals and teams. Positive energy will take organizations to the peaks of success. Negative energy will eventually burn an organization inside out.

Chyba większość z nas doświadczyła w świecie projektowym takich problemów, jak rozpoczynanie wielu projektów i zadań oraz ich niekończenie w planowanym czasie, długie cykle realizacji, brak elastyczności wobec zmieniających się wymagań klientów, czy brak sprawnych mechanizmów doskonalenia firmy, procesów, czy projektów. Z drugiej strony obecne warunki biznesowe, z duża złożonością, niepewnością i zmiennością wymagają coraz większej zwinności biznesowej (business agility) i ciągłego doskonalenia. Jeden z kierunków odpowiedzi na te wyzwania i problemy to podejście Kanban.

You might have heard of the Earth Overshoot Day (EOD). This is the day each year by which the humanity starts using the resources of the following year. It is calculated by dividing the world’s biocapacity by the global ecological footprint and multiplying this by 365. The biocapacity is understood as the amount of natural resources generated by the planet in a given year and the ecological footprint is understood as the humanity’s consumption of those natural resources in that year.

Rising rates of loneliness, depression and mental health concerns represent an opportunity for companies and leaders to embrace emotional intelligence in order to reengage people at work and life. According to Google’s famous Project Aristotle initiative, a high-performing team needs three things: 1) a strong awareness of the importance of social connections or “social sensitivity”, 2) an environment where each person speaks equally, and 3) psychological safety where everyone feels safe to show and employ themselves without fear of negative consequences. To harness these three elements of a successful team, it takes an emotionally intelligent leader.

At the Transition Manager Academy (TMA) we guide our participants through an exploration of what it is to be a leader of others for processes of significant transitional change in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Central to my teaching for TMA is a state of curiosity which is key to the learning and adaptability needed to thrive during times of rapid change. Time spent learning, and learning how to learn, is usually time well spent. And, currently, many of us have plenty of time!