Leadership & Culture

We were working on the design of a new program today, aimed at instilling a strong sense of cultural identity and evolution in new managers.  It is proving to be quite a sterling success, at least design-wise.  In the process of brainstorming and playing with different design ideas, I seemed to feel more and more certain about my fundamental views and values on leadership.  This year has given me a lot of time to reflect on the topic, to refine my thinking, to join the dots, see the interconnections, and formulate a working model of my weltanschauung on leadership and culture.

My main themes are: successful leadership is about managing the emotional content of the role; and cultural acuity is about reading, relating to, and influencing the culture of an organization.  Perhaps this definition is excessively parsimonious to the extent of being vapid, but does capture the gist of my beliefs, as well as my main value proposition in my role – a role which happily allows me to give play to these views in a fleshed-out, constructive and impactful way.