Parts of Prof. Csikszentmihalyi’s commencement address

This blogpost contains parts of Prof. Csikszentmihalyi’s commencement speech addressed at the Colorado College  in 2002. Even though this commencement address is 14 years old now, still contains ultimate truths that could serve as guiding principles of life: “Now that you are poised for this great transition, about to leave the safe for the unknown, it…

The Theory of “Flow” And Its Relevance for Organizations – 5th (final) part from the working paper

Part 4 – Demographic Changes 3. Implications for employee training and learning Traditional, formal learning systems, in which “students” sit for hours and listen to (often not well crafted and delivered) lectures and take exams are becoming less and less effective because in an ever-growing number of societies young people have mastered learning – primarily…

The Theory of “Flow” And Its Relevance for Organizations – 2nd part from the working paper

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…

Do you want to know what Flow is? Read or Watch!

Do you want to know what Flow is? If your vote is for watching (‘5): If your vote is for reading, in our new book “Missing Link Discovered“, we wrote a whole chapter on “The Science Behind Flow”. The following is an extract from From Chapter 1: In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s own words: “My original research, which I still do,…

Games can make you a better strategist…

…or at least this is what Martin Reeves and Georg Wittenburg state in their article published in Harvard Business Review (September 7, 2015). Now, before anyone would close this blog spot (or their leadership book) and log on to Facebook to play Farmville, I’ve got to disappoint you: that’s not the game they are talking…

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),…

What Flow-Leadership Skills?

Excerpt from the “Missing Link Discovered” book   A key task in order to build scientific measures relating to Flow-based leadership personalities and competencies was identifying the management/leadership skills that facilitate the creation and maintenance of a Flow-based organizational culture. The producers of FLIGBY did just that, in cooperation with Prof. Csikszentmihalyi. His Good Business…

What we are planning to research

Excerpt from the “Missing Link Discovered” book   The essence of being in a Flow state is the matching of challenges with management/leadership skills. Whereas the skill side of this coupling has been widely researched and categorized (and is often used in everyday practice), the challenge side has been underexplored, and is uncategorized. That is…