Tag: organizational values
Freeing Genius and Healing Madness
“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” —Aristotle “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” —Nietzsche “A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.” —Nikos Kazantzakis I have always been willing to tolerate idiosyncrasies in people whom I believe have deep substance or a higher perspective. This willingness has sometimes created conflicts in Read More
Principal and Principles
Dedicated to Fox Stoddard—a man of principle. There is an old story in which a man asks a woman if she would prostitute herself for $100.00. Grossly offended and insulted, the woman responds, “Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.” The man presses his case further and asks, “How about a million?” The woman pauses and says, “Hmmm, I will have to think about it.” The man then delivers the crushing blow:
The Constitution as Culture Audit
One of my favorite tasks as an organizational psychologist is to design, administer, and evaluate culture audits. The design process is the most important part because it entails asking the people in an organization to create norms and values of their own choosing. In focus groups, I ask people to share what they believe are the desired and required norms for their organizations, i.e. what kind of work environment would they find most exciting and Read More
No Dancing in These Halls
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” —Nietzsche On a big gig with big Pharma, I brought my older daughter to help with collecting data and gathering impressions. After a week of intensive focus groups and walking through the corporate headquarters, she dryly commented, “Hmmm, there’s no dancing in these halls!” By that time in my career, I had worked with hundreds of organizations around the world, Read More
The Menace of Mendacity
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. —Albert Einstein There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. —Buddha Truth is not a trivial thing. Words matter. Being accurate requires curiosity, diligence, and rigor. I know that everyone has a different idea about what is truth. Much of the debate started when Pontius Pilate asked Read More
Thinking and Believing
Believe me—Daniel Kahneman got it right: we are more likely to find stories that support our beliefs than seek out evidence in the pursuit of truth. Kahneman is a professor emeritus at Princeton University who wrote the best selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. His work is focused on the psychology of judgment and decision-making for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. His findings challenge the assumption of human rationality. Clearly, Read More
Selecting Coaches
Forty years ago, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the selection of counselors for public high schools. I didn’t write it to create a career-defining, landmark study. I wrote it to check off a box for the completion of my doctoral degree in counseling psychology. Little did I know that the profession of coaching and counseling would explode in the next century. Now, practically everyone either has a coach or is a coach. The question Read More
Building Trust
Trust is the foundational building block for organizational health. Just as diet and exercise are the key starting points for physical health, trust is the “must have” for building a healthy, productive, and innovative work environment. Without trust, you have no chance of creating the kind of organizational culture you may want to build. Trust has two components: indvidual and institutional. Individual trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or Read More