Has leadership had its day? Organisations today seem to be unable to call upon anything else when it comes to thinking about the future, creating change and getting things done. We ask whether this might be an unhealthy state of affairs. Mayvin’s forthcoming book by Principal Consultant Tony Nicholls, The Forgotten Art of Management, will address this question and …
In the last of three posts, Mayvin Principal Consultant Tony Nicholls continues to set out the content for his future book. His aim is to socialise his thinking in order to invite commentary and critique. In his first post, he set out his thinking for why management needs a stronger focus to counterbalance the decades-old obsession …
In a series of three posts, Mayvin Principal Consultant Tony Nicholls sets out the opening chapter for his future book. His aim is to socialise his thinking in order to invite commentary and critique. He writes based on experiences working and consulting in various types of organisation. This experience is intermingled with the theories and …
At times of unprecedented complexity, pressure and ambiguity, it is a natural response to put up psychological defences. In his latest blog, Mayvin Director Martin Saville invites us all to practise building tolerance for anxiety instead of trying to avoid it. Back in December I shared three leadership principles for uncertain times, based on our work with …
Guest blogger Pete Burden invites you to face up to the discomfort of newness and change by taking some simple, powerful steps to becoming a truly digital leader. There are many definitions of what it means to become more ‘digital’ as an organisation or to be a digital leader. Many lists, models and theories. I tend …
Giving up on making a big difference can generate the freedom we need to create change in complexity. Tony Nicholls blogs about this year’s Meaning Conference. I recently attended the annual Meaning conference in Brighton. People from all walks of life came together to listen to speakers and to meet like-minded people. They came hungry …
Mayvin Director Martin Saville responds to a Guardian article about the need for new approaches to leadership in the NHS I read a great article last Monday about NHS leadership in The Guardian’s ‘Views from the NHS frontline’ series. The writer, an anonymous executive coach to senior NHS execs, was arguing that most senior leaders …
It’s a daunting prospect chairing a meeting of the Mayvin Advisory Board. It’s not that I don’t know stuff, or even that I haven’t done OD for real and sometimes done some good work. Never mind that among the three Directors there are two Masters degrees and a doctorate – all in relevant subjects. Add …
Do Senior Leaders shy away from uncovering the truth about the breakdowns in their businesses? Is this why we sometimes experience organisations as incapable of integrating the learning we provoke? At Mayvin we often grapple with the challenge of making sure that the learning we facilitate in our clients’ businesses is fully integrated. We ourselves …
I committed to reflect on abundance as part of the mindset/skillset of C21L, and this has become a kind of log of it. I am choosing to offer some of it to you now, only partially edited, in the spirit of being bold and open. Hope it makes some sense. This isn’t the end of …
Complexity is hard to explain. Well it would be wouldn’t it? Making such a set of ideas applicable in a practical way to the everyday life of an organisation is a challenge. It isn’t that complexity is strange to us – after all it is something we are dealing with all the time. If you’ve …
I like travelling by train. I find it brilliant for writing, doing emails, reading, etc. However, for it to work for me, I have realised that I need to stick to one golden rule, which is not to count on being able to use the time productively. As soon as I count on using my …
How effective is leadership development? Some things to consider: Prior to the economic crash, many of the investment banks that indulged in dubious behaviours, were lauded for their leadership development programmes. Regularly we heard commentators in the media reference a lack of leadership, and with recent scandals in politics (such as the expenses scandal) or …
It seems we were on to something in our last posting. We read in the latest New Scientist that highly credible, peer-reviewed research backs our hunch that companies inadvertently undermine their talent. According to research findings, more stumbled upon than planned, by André Spicer, from Cass Business School, London, working with Mats Alvesson from Lund …
There is a scene from David Bowie’s iconic 1970s movie, the ‘Man Who Fell to Earth’. At the end of the story, the Martian (played by Bowie) is being interviewed on TV. We are shocked to see how dull this one-time supernatural being has become. He has been quite literally brought down to Earth. It …
At Mayvin we are exploring key leadership skills for 20th century leaders. In this blog, we explore the essential skill of suspending judgement. Speculation abounds as to whether the remains found buried under a Leicester City Car Park are those of the supposedly notorious English King, Richard III. Richard’s death in 1485 at the Battle of …
The TJ Winter Conference – Using Social Media in Learning #TJ12 ran last month in London and for me it seemed the ideal place to introduce the idea of the Glass Wall to a larger audience. We kicked off the experiment in the afternoon, straight after lunch and had changed the room layout slightly to …
Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Royal Opera House. The Ring is a series of four operas lasting in total around 16 hours, dealing with many of humanity’s universal themes; and at least for those of us who are opera-heads, it is one of the greatest pieces of art …
James Traeger explores better relationships in organisations through the lens of football: Honestly! Chelsea under Di Matteo win the FA cup and the Champions League and now he gets the sack, not half a year later! But WAIT! Don’t stop reading! This isn’t, despite what you may think, really about football. It is about my …
What is leadership for? Most of the time, I suggest, it is about dealing with people’s anxiety. And because of the uncertainty, complexity and pace that the 21st Century brings us, it could be that in C21L terms, this anxiety is getting bigger. In 1933, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said ‘We have nothing to …
This is one of those posts that my PHD supervisor charmingly refers to as throat clearing – its the piece you have to write before you can write the piece you want to write. I have been doing a lot of internal mulling about the nature of collaboration and leadership in networked organisations. This is …
Social networking means that that our actions are going to more subject to scrutiny than ever before. Although we shouldn’t try to be a good person just because someone is watching, it makes the challenge and opportunity of goodness more acute and more present in the everyday moments of truth that we face. In the …
The Rabbi who gave the sermon was compelling. She was a bright, young woman – an engaging speaker.There was a great balance of wisdom, self-deprecation, and charm in her talk. But then she started to use a word that landed with a kind of thud. Like a stone on the windscreen, it shattered my picture …
How do you train 21st Century (C21L) leaders to face the truth, or more poignantly the truths in their organisation, the un-sanitized, varied, complex perspectives that abound across the layers of authority? Those in power at senior levels tend to be insulated from what is going on at street level. Creating a kind of short-circuit, …