Part 1 – “Are you satisfied with your workplace?” Leaders versus managers Before delving into our main topics, let us detour briefly by addressing a controversy in the organizational literature: the presumed similarities and differences between “managers” and “leaders”. The subtitle of our book (which we are partly summarizing and partly extending here) is “Integrating…
Category: Business Values
Spring chickens and old dogs – generations working together
About 150-200 years ago when people died at a younger age (around 40-60) and the yearly technical advancement wasn’t that significant, it didn’t cause any problems for generations to work together. It was obvious that everyone starts at the bottom at a young age and works him/herself up on the ladder by learning and perfecting the tricks of…
Think and act like a leader – aka: managerial skills don’t have gender
Women are taught “male” leadership as well in the business world, but as soon as they start acting according to what they studied, they are called the “B” word. Its softer translation is bossy. Studies are coming to light almost every single day proving that a woman can have just as great leadership skills as…
Wine producing as benchmark for sustainability?
Learning responsible leadership from Californian wineries Managing a company these days should be more than just giving out orders and expecting profit at the end of the month. As Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains in his book “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the making of Meaning”, those who pursue to build good business are creating…
A Sustainable Business Maverick
Dr. Michael Crooke – Achieving Spectacular Results with Flow-Based Leadership Many famous individuals have been so inspired by Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow and his Good Business concepts that they gave him credit for some spectacular successes achieved by putting the Flow concept into practice. One of the most remarkable is Dr. Michael Crooke (MC, as he likes to be called),…
The Circle of Flow
The “Circle of Flow” shows the many-fold, life-long impacts of value-based leadership. The starting as well as the end-point is Csikszentmihalyi’s landmark Flow theory, the inexhaustible fount of outstanding individual and organizational achievements. As we proceed along life’s “circular flow”, a broad new vista emerges. From observers we become decision-makers, who will more and more experience…
Value-based Leadership
To be an effective manager/leader is undeniably complex. One must simultaneously perform well in multiple dimensions and reconcile contradictory issues: the urgent with the important, quantity with quality, operational with strategic decisions, the short-run with the long-run, and so on. However, beyond these important dilemmas lies one incontrovertible fact: today, effective leadership depends not just…
About the tragedy of choice
The other day I came across with Michael Crooke, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Robert Bikel article titled Leadership in a Complex World: How to Manage ‘‘The Tragedy of Choice’’ (Organizational Dynamics, Volume 44, Issue 2, April–June 2015, Pages 146–155). The article states no less than: “even when a company is committed to its core values, tension between values…