There are “things that don’t scale” many organizations avoid doing when they reach a certain size.

Leaders in those organizations (who may have begun bravely desiring to commit to doing those things) abandon the “things that don’t scale” as other interests begin to attract their attention (see Google here) and as other constituencies demand…

When the conflict needle moves at the top of the organizational hierarchy, it doesn’t always translate to changes at the bottom of the organizational funnel.

This is due to three reasons:

• People at varying levels in organizations make assumptions about the value of organizational change, based upon the organizational myths and stories that…

“Our values are our strength.”

“Our people are our greatest resource.”

We could go on, but pointing out the hypocrisy evident in the difference between the words written on the organizational masthead, and the actual organizational action, has been written about to death.

Leadership in many organizations is tricky for a variety of reasons, but the…

Much is made in the Western world of the importance of an apology.

When we start out as children—and our world is starkly black and white—apology comes, not from inside of us, but from outside of us. It is a statement we are compelled to say to others when we hurt them, under…

In many organizations, the anticipated fear of doing something that might not work when resolving a conflict outweighs the anticipated benefits of taking a risk and resolving a conflict in a new way.

This anticipated fear shows up in four areas. 

• Poor customer service interactions—these…

Effective conflict management should be a consistently pursued leadership competency in all organizations.

Often though, it’s not even pursued.

Or, even worse when it is pursued, it’s relegated to attending a one off workshop, or seminar over a weekend with little to no follow-up. Neither of these realities lead to lasting changes in the ways…