Next Generation Leadership Blog | Human-Centered Performance

The Question Underneath the Question

organizational culture, leadership communication, Culture, Building Trust, Human-Centered Performance, Organizational Capacity, Becoming, communication

This week I've been thinking about what people are really asking for when they ask for more communication. Every engagement survey says some version of the same thing. We want more transparency. More communication. More trust. We want to feel engaged. Leaders read those results and do the reasonable thing — they add. Another all-hands. A monthly update. A new channel. More words, sent more often,...

The Difference Between Information and Orientation

organizational culture, leadership communication, Culture, Building Trust, Human-Centered Performance, Organizational Capacity, Becoming, communication

I was in a room a few months ago with a leadership team that had done everything right. They had dashboards. They had a real strategic plan — a good one. Quarterly OKRs. An engagement survey with an 80-something percent response rate. A data team that could pull any number you asked for in about four minutes. And when I asked them one simple question — "Where is this organization right now?" — I...

Why Employees Experience Managers More Than Organizations

organizational culture, leadership communication, Culture, ChangeManagement, Building Trust, Human-Centered Performance, Organizational Capacity, Becoming

One of the most profound realities of organizational life is this: Employees don't actually experience "the organization." They experience their manager. A strategic plan is finalized and announced.The organizational values are on the website for everyone to see. The email from the executive is delivered to all-staff. And yet, depending on who someone's manager is, the experience can be...

Through the Challenging Parts of Your Journey

organizational culture, leadership communication, Culture, ChangeManagement, Building Trust, Human-Centered Performance, Organizational Capacity, Becoming

I’ve been at a lot of “family and friends” events lately. Sometimes the family and friends are family of friends, people I don’t even know and have no context for knowing. Of course, I have to make small talk. That’s what we do, isn’t it?

What Happens When the Work Outgrows the Organization?

organizational culture, leadership communication, Culture, ChangeManagement, Building Trust, Human-Centered Performance, Organizational Capacity, Becoming

For years, conversations about organizational effectiveness have focused on familiar questions: How do we improve collaboration? How do we make better decisions? How do we become more efficient? How do we reduce duplication of effort? Those are important questions. But increasingly, I think they are secondary questions. The real insight is not that organizational effectiveness...