The greatest danger to a successful organization is rarely its competitors. The greatest danger is that it begins to believe that the system that once created success will also create tomorrow’s. It’s a tempting thought. When something works, we want to understand it, document it, and repeat it. We build […]
Leadership
104 posts
Imagine two companies that have been equally successful at developing new products for several years. In one company, there is a person who always comes up with the best ideas. Her colleagues know that when problems get really difficult, they just have to go to her. She sees connections that […]
Most of us have experienced it. We are sitting in a lecture, reading a book or having a conversation with someone over a cup of coffee. Suddenly the person says something that doesn’t really seem remarkable. It’s just a sentence. Yet time stands still for a moment. Something falls into […]
Imagine a change project. People have met, relationships have been built, new ideas have been tried out and old conflicts have slowly begun to dissolve. But then nothing seems to happen. Meetings become fewer. Activity decreases. Some people start to get impatient and wonder if the work has lost momentum. […]
It is easy to think that innovators encounter resistance because their ideas are bad or unrealistic. Of course, this happens sometimes, but much more often the resistance is about something else entirely. New ideas challenge people’s sense of stability. We humans build mental models of how the world works. They […]
Imagine that you are standing in front of two construction projects. On the first site stands one of the country’s most skilled carpenters. He has fantastic knowledge, vast experience and an impressive sense for materials and construction. The problem is that he is standing there alone. There are no drawings. […]
Imagine that you are standing in front of the mirror and thinking about changing your appearance. You can choose to put on a new hat. If you don’t like it, you can take it off five minutes later and no major damage has been done. You can also go to […]
Imagine two teams given the exact same task. The first team consists of four people who have been given clear goals, clear instructions, and clear requirements. They know exactly what needs to be delivered. They know why the company needs the results. They understand the importance of the assignment. But […]
It often starts almost imperceptibly. An invisible line in the room. A meeting at a company. Someone leans back in their chair and says: “The problem is that management doesn’t understand reality.” Someone else nods immediately. A few minutes later, the room has been divided into two invisible camps. Us […]
Imagine the following scene. A young manager walks into a meeting and says that the organization should stop optimizing what already works and instead start experimenting with something that is not yet yielding results. The room falls silent. Someone coughs a little strategically. Another starts talking about budget discipline. After […]
There is a particular type of meeting where someone leans forward, looks seriously at the PowerPoint and says: “We need to make sure that this initiative is strategically important and has a structure that we can present to everyone before we move on.” It sounds very sensible. The problem is […]
It always starts the same way. A meeting is booked with good intentions. Someone has thought that this is important, that this will create direction, commitment and maybe even a little energy. But somewhere along the way something happens. The presentations get longer, the discussions shorter and the participants quieter. […]
You sit there late one evening and look at your account. Three months ago it was full steam ahead. Customers were calling, invoices were being sent, everything felt like it had finally loosened up. Now it’s quiet. The calendar is empty. And somewhere in the back of your mind there’s […]
There’s something strange that happens as soon as people gather in a meeting room. The language changes. The words get longer, the sentences more complex, and the content… well, the content gets lost somewhere along the way. Suddenly we’re talking about strategic initiatives, synergies, transformations, and frameworks. Everyone nods. No […]
There is a special kind of frustration that arises in complex projects. Everything is slow, nothing happens as planned, and finally someone thinks that more power is needed. More pressure, clearer decisions, faster pace. Someone says, let’s go now. And it feels good … for exactly five minutes. Then something […]
Imagine a leader who walks into a room and subconsciously thinks that everything is about them. How am I perceived? How do I compare to others? Am I in control? Will this affect my position? It is not always immediately noticeable, but it is felt. Decisions become cautious, conversations become […]
You have assembled a brilliant team. An engineer from Germany, a designer from Italy, a project manager from Sweden and an entrepreneur from India. The skills are sky-high, the ambitions are too high. You sit down in a room to be creative. Silence ensues. Someone says something cautiously, someone else […]
Imagine a meeting where everyone agrees that they will collaborate. There is a good atmosphere, everyone contributes, tasks are distributed and deadlines are set. The project moves forward and everything feels correct. And yet something strange happens. Once the result is ready, it feels like something we have already seen […]
There is a point where more thinking no longer helps. Where more analysis does not create more clarity but rather more delay. That point occurs more often than we think. When the complexity of a system increases, the world changes faster than our plans. The conditions shift. Actors react. New […]
Systems innovation attracts with the promise of real change but almost always meets resistance, confusion and frustration along the way. This is not because people are unwilling or that the methods are wrong, but because systems themselves are complex, alive and sensitive to change. Working with systems innovation therefore involves […]
Leadership has always been about getting people moving in a common direction. What has changed is the context. When organizations operate in stable environments, traditional leadership is sufficient. When they operate in uncertain, fast-moving and interconnected systems, it is no longer sufficient. This is when the need for innovation leadership […]
Many organizations and individuals are trained to interpret changes in the outside world based on a simple question: How can this benefit us? When new technology emerges, when rules change or when societal challenges become clear, people quickly look for opportunities to protect their position or strengthen their competitiveness. This […]
The open source movement emerged from a technical context but has evolved into something much bigger than code. It represents a way of organizing people, knowledge and creativity that has proven time and again to be able to create enormous impact without relying on traditional hierarchies or ownership structures. At […]
Organizations are complex social systems where people try to work together to achieve something together. Despite this, the focus often ends up on structures, processes and individual behaviors, while one of the central factors is overlooked: leadership. When mistakes are made, when conflicts arise or when projects fall apart, attention […]
Crisis is a state that no one wants. It is associated with uncertainty, anxiety and often both stress and loss. But from an innovation perspective, there is a paradoxical quality to crises. They force us to stop accepting the current situation and stop giving us the opportunity to postpone the […]
Creating time for innovation is one of the biggest practical challenges for both individuals and organizations. Although many people talk about innovation as something important, it often ends up at the bottom of the to-do list. The urgent takes precedence over the important. Administrative tasks crowd out the creative. The […]
When people or organizations come together to create something new, a strange and often underestimated stage occurs. In the beginning, there is enthusiasm, consensus and the kind of generosity that only exists when everything is still possible. People plan, allocate resources and say that they will work together with openness […]
It happens time and time again. A small start-up enters an established field and in a few years changes the rules of the game so drastically that previously dominant companies are suddenly in the shadows. Why does this happen? What does the journey look like from the perspective of the […]
When we talk about systems innovation, many people think of the transition to a circular economy, digitalization or new business models that are changing entire industries. But all of these pale in comparison to the system we already live in. The biological ecosystem is the largest and most complex system […]
The concept of flow, coined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, describes the state in which we are completely immersed in a task, where challenge and ability are in perfect balance. In flow, we experience energy, focus and satisfaction. But what happens to this state in a world where AI is quickly becoming […]