By Carol Mase on February 16, 2011
In 1999 I facilitated scenario building for eleven cross-functional pharmaceutical teams (R&D, clinical development, global marketing, regional operations, manufacturing, and regulatory). The future was 2020 and we were imagining the marketplace, what consumers would expect, how diseases would be treated, and the features and benefits of the gold standard therapies of the day. Imagining the […]
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By Carol Mase on February 9, 2011
A number of years ago I was called by a client because “things are falling through the cracks.” Suspicious that the issue was systemic (rather than technical or due to poor performance), a systems analysis was performed. The world today is so interconnected and interdependent that leaders need to differentiate situations that are Complex from […]
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By Steve Wolinski on February 8, 2011
The intent in this blog entry is to a) share some thoughts on the vital importance of feedback as it relates to leadership and b) discuss a few or the more common methods used for gathering, interpreting, and sharing feedback.
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By Carol Mase on February 2, 2011
In 1996 I was working in Germany for a large pharmaceutical company. One of my areas of responsibility was the decision analysis process that determined the probability of success for the drugs we were developing. The goal of the exercise was to make a decision based on the certainty of a predicted outcome. Sound familiar? […]
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By Steve Wolinski on February 1, 2011
Gurnek Bains and his colleagues at YSC Consulting have written a book called Meaning Inc: The Blueprint for Business Success in the Twenty First Century. In it they argue that it is critical for leaders to create organizational cultures that have meaning and are meaningful for team members. This blog entry looks at the four primary challenges (or qualities) that the authors believe leaders will face in their attempts to create meaningful work cultures.
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By Carol Mase on January 26, 2011
Darcy,[i] a VP in a large pharmaceutical company, began using VUCA and VUCA Prime when she faced an unexpected regulatory issue. Now she uses it daily to make sense of her constantly shifting world. Our conversations are peppered with: “Let’s VUCA this.”, “He is reacting personally, but it is just VUCA.”, and “I need to […]
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By Carol Mase on January 21, 2011
Recap from VUCA – A Leader’s Dilemma A multinational organization faces a major structural reorganization that contains significant functional changes and leadership challenges. Facing the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) are four leaders responsible for implementing a significant part of the organizational change without losing strategic momentum. Finding VUCA Prime Like most organizations, the […]
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By Carol Mase on January 17, 2011
Last spring I walked into a client’s office to deliver a leadership development program design and was greeted with, “We just got the McKinsey/BCG/Bain (take your pick) consulting report and we are completely reorganizing the business unit.”[i] Sound familiar? Look anywhere – business, the marketplace, organizations, or personal lives – the amount of turbulence today […]
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By Steve Wolinski on January 12, 2011
Adaptability and Resiliency as Overlooked Leadership Qualities In my mind the unsung hero of effective leadership are two related and overlapping qualities: adaptability and resiliency. The ability and, probably more importantly, the willingness of a leader to adapt his or her thinking, behavior, or strategy based on changing circumstances, miscalculations, or other factors, is a […]
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By Steven Ober on January 6, 2011
Three Sub-Systems This post is the third in a series on Leading in Complex Human Systems. In my last two posts, we began our review of The Butterfly Model of Human Systems. The Model suggests that larger human systems are composed of three major subsystems: The Face to Face System–what happens “in the room,” […]
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Carol Mase, President of Cairn Consultants, is an educator and coach-consultant who has worked in global marketing, strategic planning, and large scale organizational change. [Read more ...]
Kristin Keffeler, MSM, of Kinetic Enterprise, is a business development and leadership coach who specializes in supporting entrepreneurs and business leaders to bring their Big Ideas to life.
Dr. Steven Ober is a senior executive coach and consultant. He has worked successfully with executives and managers in high tech, business and industry, health care, government, and education.