The article in the Financial Times titled ‘ Innovation is all about the customer ‘ is certainly true, but what must not be forgotten is that innovation is also all about governance.
We must remember that innovation has nothing to do with invention – most innovations are transactional, and a series of progressive steps to ensure better governance and working practices.
A fundamental block on British innovation is a governance issue: boards are delegating too much of the ‘follow-through’ or application of governance to management and in an age of austerity where cost control is king, innovation and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) get sidelined.
Good governance requires scrutinizing possible blockages to governance and execution all the way down the company structure, and from my experience, there seem to be three sticking points where governance, and therefore innovation and CSR, get blocked.
These sticking points [...]

In our research of over 12,500 organisations, we found that it is often difficult to deal with sensitive issues arising in the workplace, largely because often the very people in the room are part of the problem as well. This means that more often than not you have a sensitive issue as well as a sensitive relationship, leading to an “elephant in the room” type of situation, as typified in this blog post on the Harvard Business Review website .
Where there is a diversity of opinion, or the issue is complex, or one director does not completely trust the judgement of another, then finding the strength to have that difficult conversation is identified as not easily forthcoming. Pleasing people is the easy way out, and is a common phenomenon.  Sensitive problems, such as affairs in the workplace, or bullying, can see managers and [...]

The reality of geopolitics today is that the boundary between the corporation and government is now indistinguishable. The two have overlapped so much that we really should be training our future business managers on how to navigate and influence complex policy environments as well. A recent article by Jonathan Doh and Guy Pfeffermann in the Financial Times, titled “Top schools face globalisation challenge” , observes how business schools fail to address the different demands of leadership today. Business schools seem to concentrate too much on organisational and strategic leadership, while neglecting governance leadership, and stopping entirely short of policy-design leadership.
Unfortunately, business schools do not think to generate models that really look at this overarching form of leadership. It is interesting how many bright people you get walking into interesting jobs and yet they are not educated for them. The business school of the future is [...]

Andrew and I, together with Dr. Isaac Mostovicz of Janus Thinking , are in the process of developing a leadership questionnaire. We would like to test and validate the questionnaire so far before we proceed any further. Can you spare 10 minutes and test out our survey? Click on the following link to take it:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/leadership_opinions
Thanks very much.

In mature markets, where growth is slow and costs are managed to the extreme, what differentiates one company from another? Many organisations and managers have actually become rather indistinguishable in that they uniformly pay attention to teamwork and quality, reduce costs where they can (often through outsourcing) and get rid of poorly performing executives—these activities make for good organisations. But then what give some companies a leading edge over others? It comes down two factors.
The first is brand—a strong brand reputation makes people believe that a Mercedes is better than a Ford, and can help a company even if this belief proves not to be true (e.g. if Mercedes outsourced some faulty components and their quality did decline below the perceived quality of Ford).
The other differentiating factor is people. Better led teams will be more motivated; when there’s a single company mentality, especially among [...]

When I recently noted how some bankers might be self-deceptive narcissists, I didn’t mention any of the potential positives that narcissists can bring to the workplace as leaders. This recent article on Slate about narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder mentions some positives (and negatives) that Michael Maccoby recognized in his book The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership :
[Maccoby] makes a distinction between leaders with narcissistic traits and those who have full-blown NPD. He says narcissists can be charismatic forces for change—because of their drive, vision, risk-taking, and even ruthlessness, many corporations turn to narcissists for salvation. But such people can become dangerous because their success fuels their already ample grandiosity and feeds the sense they got there by disdaining the normal rules.
I agree that drive, vision, risk-taking and ruthlessness can be beneficial traits in a leader. [...]

In the lead up Barack Obama’s inauguration next week, much has been written about his dependence on his BlackBerry. It appears that he will not be able to continue using it once he becomes president, due to the lack of security for messages and the need for all presidential communications to be recorded and later made available to the public. But Obama is rather fond of the device–he said in an interview on American TV:
They’re going to pry it out of my hands. This is a concern, I should add, not just of Secret Service, but also lawyers.
While a heavy user, I don’t think Obama is a BlackBerry addict –he seems able to focus on things and work without his BlackBerry when necessary. I’m sure he’ll follow the rules (and perhaps switch to an approved device [...]

“I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.”
Bartlett, Tennessee, 18 August, 2000
Thus said outgoing American president George W. Bush. This was one quote among many that the BBC recently put together in a collection of Bush misstatements . While he didn’t get the words out right, his sentiment, that a leader is someone who brings people together, is actually true. [...]

The American auto makers are rapidly becoming another casualty of the financial crisis. However, the financial crisis is not the sole reason for their downfall; we need only look to Toyota and other non-American auto makers to see that–while not thriving, these non-American car companies are at least surviving the downturn without any government handouts. [...]

This past July I had the pleasure of conducting a master class for the NHS in London. The NHS runs these classes as a way to engage staff with the latest in leadership thinking and leadership best practice. My talk, ‘Leadership in the NHS: Driving Strategic Improvement at all Levels,’ is available to watch as a podcast on the NHS’s website here .