Articles
N. R. Narayana Murthy
Until I read yesterday's Sunday Times article covering Rishi Sunak's bid to become leader of the Conservative Party, I was vaguely aware that his...
Why weren’t we better prepared for COVID-19? The neuroscience of unreasonable optimism
This article was first published on History News Network in 2012. I've changed the title to reflect our current realities but I haven't updated the...
Lee Kuan Yew: Creating A Nation
Below is a short biography of Lee Kuan Yew taken from my book History Lessons, which looks at the great leaders from history and explores what...
Is your organisation stuck in the industrial era?
Is your organisation stuck in the industrial era? Find out now by taking our quick, twenty-question How Steam Are You? survey for an instant...
The 25 golden rules of rubbish management
I have been observing managers, and was for a long time managed by managers, for more years than I care to recall. I am using the term...
My Steam Engine is Broken
Taking the organization from the industrial era to the Age of Ideas
Status stress: the perfect way to destroy creativity at work
Are you ever stressed at work? That was a trick question. We are all stressed at work, in ways so fundamental that we do not even recognise...
Abandon failed projects: great leadership idea #101
Teams become emotionally attached to major projects in which they have invested their creative energies. It is difficult for organisations to...
Let the organisation manage itself. Great Leadership Idea 146
Leaders should be concerned with strategy, not operational execution. If the organisation is set up so that colleagues understand what they...
Create infectious ideas or ‘memes’. Great Leadership Idea No. 183
Infectious ideas – or ‘memes’—are powerful communication tools that pack a great deal of conceptual and emotional content into a simple...
Anarchy in the workplace: in praise of self-organisation
In my earlier blog, Ricardo Semler, Maverick: organisational democracy or anarchy? or I said that I didn’t believe that ‘democracy’ is a...
Maverick! Ricardo Semler’s 10 democratic changes at Semco
In my previous blogs, I have given some background to the story of Ricardo Semler, who took over the Brazilian manufacturing company, Semco, from...
Ricardo Semler, Maverick: organisational democracy or anarchy?
If you are interested, as I am, in how we can drag the organisation out of the old, nineteenth-century, early-industrial structure in which...
Embrace surprises — Great Leadership Idea No. 140
Management seeks to regularise the irregular; to iron-out discrepancies and to correct deviations in the search for the perfectly-managed...
Mine the data — Great Leadership Idea No. 148
Your organisation probably has a lot more data to hand than it realises – and almost certainly a lot more data than it actually uses. That data can...
Create followers – Great Leadership Idea No. 23
Giving people orders – commanding people to do things – works (a bit) in some situations. We’ve got used to it. We (the commanded) roll our...
Create Action Groups — Great Leadership Idea No. 22
Every leader is faced with a long list of issues that are not absolutely central to the implementation of the core vision but that,...
Make it Happen – Great Leadership Idea No. 4
All of a leader’s great plans come to nothing if they are not successfully executed. This edited version of 'Make it Happen' from 100 Great...
Jack Welch on how to handle a PR crisis
Back in the 1980’s, the General Electric Company found itself in the middle of a PR disaster that stemmed from an apparently minor issue (a...
The five essential characteristics of all great entrepreneurs
What are the 5 key characteristics of every great entrepreneur? Or possibly six (see below). Well, I’m afraid that, to quote Monty Python’s...
Encourage diversity — Great Leadership Idea No. 45
Diversity in any ecosystem is essential to its survival: the different adaptations displayed by various organisms within the system allow...
Genghis Khan: creating a nation and an empire
In the West, the name of Genghis Khan still fills us with an almost instinctive dread. The Mongol horde emerged unexpectedly from the East,...
Mustafa Kemal, the creator of modern Turkey
Mustafa Kemal created modern Turkey. He salvaged the nation from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, when...
April 2nd, 1801. ‘I see no ships’: Horatio Nelson turns a blind eye at the Battle of Copenhagen
Horatio Nelson, who would become Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson as he was successively promoted and honoured by the Royal Navy and a grateful British...
Martin Lindstrom’s Brandwashed doesn’t seem to know what a brand is
I don't normally give books bad reviews. This is because I only have time to read books about subjects that interest me, and there is nearly always...
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord, ‘The Prince of Diplomats’
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord, known to history (thankfully) as ‘Talleyrand’, is the towering figure of late-eighteenth century diplomacy....
John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough
John Churchill, the ancestor of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, rose from relative obscurity to become the first...
Rich Americans good; poor Americans bad. Charles Murray is Coming Apart.
I have been reading some of the flakier right wing American thinkers, mainly for entertainment, but also because I am fretting about whether there...
Napoleon’s Whiff of Grapeshot
In the later phase of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte – then a mere Brigadier General (who had, in fact, recently been struck off...
Citizens United: corporations are not associations of citizens
In 2010, a ruling by the Supreme Court of America in the now notorious Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), allows...
Napoleon first demonstrates his leadership skills: The Siege of Toulon
Napoleon’s first opportunity to demonstrate his exceptional leadership skills came with the French Revolution – the dramatic social upheaval...
Terence Conran’s Habitat: changing lifestyles in 1960s Britain
The current Terence Conran exhibition at the London Design Museum reminds us of the startling impact that Habitat had on the tastes and lifestyles...
Abraham Lincoln: boldness of vision
Abraham Lincoln, at a truly critical moment in American history, presented to a troubled and divided nation a clear and commanding vision:...
Nelson Mandela’s leadership: changing the mood
One of the most difficult tasks that a leader may face is to change the engrained ‘mood’ of an organisation; its very culture. South Africa’s...
Be Decisive – Great Leadership Idea No. 62
Change involves risk, and there will never be enough information to guarantee that you have made the right decision. At some point, leaders...
Zhou Enlai, ‘beloved premier’
Zhou Enlai was Premier of the People’s Republic of China from the moment the Chinese Communist Party achieved power in 1949, following their...
Forging strategic partnerships – Apple strikes deal with Microsoft
The very real animosity that existed for so many years between Apple and Microsoft, both at an organisational level and amongst users, has...
Options and consensus – Great Leadership Idea No. 35
Change is implemented more quickly and successfully when alternative options have been discussed in advance, and when the team as a whole has...
Give people autonomy – Great Leadership Idea No 31
Successful leaders offer substantial autonomy to members of the team and to parts of the business. Individuals are empowered, and respond to...
Zero tolerance and the staff kitchen – Great Leadership Idea No 60
If the tap in the staff kitchen is broken and nobody mends it, colleagues quite quickly begin to draw a number of very negative conclusions—in...
Giving colleagues reasons to be proud: the Greg Dyke Way
In an earlier blog Greg Dyke and John Birt: lessons in leadership I explored the dramatic difference in leadership style between two previous...
Leadership and courage: Napoleon returns from exile in Elba
One of the defining aspects of leadership is courage: having the bravery not only to stand up and ask people to follow but also to put one’s...
Louis Gerstner’s vision for IBM: the customer is always right
In my blog ‘Gerstner and the IBM turnaround: vision or execution’, I wrote about the life-threatening hole that IBM had got itself into by...
The Renaissance: brought to you by bankers
have always been viewed with suspicion or dislike: we have an ambivalent attitude to the people who control access to the capital we need in order...
Be authentic — Great Leadership Idea No. 61
People still talk about ‘the masks of leadership’—about a leader’s need to present different ‘faces’ to different audiences. Forget it....
Taking the offensive: General George Patton and … Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Taking the Offensive is one of the leadership and business skills that draws most heavily on comparison with military strategy. One of the...
Encourage real debate — Great Leadership Idea No. 27
Everyone wants to please the boss. Few of us are immune to the joys of hearing what we want to hear. Bad news, on the other hand, is never...
‘We will either find a way, or make one’ – Hannibal crosses the Alps
Hannibal Barca was one of the great leaders of all time. Borrowing, to some extent, from the example of Alexander the Great—who had conquered...
Encourage candor – Great Leadership Idea No. 26
Jack Welch, ex-CEO of America’s giant General Electric Company, is famous for his insistence on ‘candor’ in business: the burning need to get...
Confidence and Humility – Great Leadership Idea No. 67
Leaders need to tread the fine line between having the necessary confidence in their own abilities, and the lack of sensitivity and humility...
Changing the Mood: leadership lessons from the Battle of El Alamein
‘Changing the mood’ is one of the most challenging problems that a leader of any organisation can face. Successful organisations start off in life...
Tea Parties, Taxation and the power of the popular movement
When politicians try to find a compelling name for a new initiative that they are about to launch, the results are nearly always both inept and...
Harness the intelligence of the organisation — Great Leadership Idea No. 48
All leaders like to believe that they are doing this—but without fundamental systems and cultural structures in place, they are probably...
Leadership strategy: Jack Welch or Napoleon Bonaparte?
A version of this article first appeared in the June 2010 issue of Strategy magazine, with the title What lies beneath? Several leading modern...
100 Great Business Leaders
Concise accounts of the careers of 100 great business leaders, exploring the business challenges they faced and the key ideas that made them...
Churchill’s leadership: the possibility of greatness
The last cavalry charge At the end of the nineteenth century, a young twenty-three year-old British cavalry officer serving with the 21st...
100 More Great Leadership Ideas
100 more realistic and practical leadership ideas drawn from the wisdom and experience of successful modern leaders.
Command and Control management: have we really moved on?
‘Command and Control’ is a phrase that we only use nowadays in connection with modern management in a tone of amused irony. We all know about...
No template for a great leader? Role models in leadership
This article first appeared in Hourglass magazine, issue 18, published by Croner Publishing in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. You...
Greg Dyke and John Birt: lessons in leadership
The broadcasting lives of John Birt and Greg Dyke were surprisingly interwoven. When Dyke joined LWT (London Weekend Television) as a reporter in...
Carly Fiorina’s favourite business author was apparently Hegel. So—mysticism, historical determinism and the rise of the state?
There are definitely a few porky-pies in Carly Fiorina’s book, Tough Choices. Fiorina was, of course, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard who led the...
Brown, Cameron and Clegg; leadership or management?
The UK’s 2010 election, like most (but not all) elections, is all about the desire for change and the fear of the unkown. In the light of the...
Past masterclasses: history’s great leaders had talents we can still learn from in the workplace
This article first appeared in The Guardian and can be seen at guardian.co.uk The article is based on historical figures who feature in Jonathan's...
History Lessons
An exploration of what set the great leaders of history apart from their contemporaries and enabled their dramatic successes.
Perform to Win
Unlocking the secrets of the arts for personal and business success
Blindsided
Throughout history, business and society have been blindsided by people’s irrational and unpredictable behaviour. How could we have been so stupid? ...
Come on Cameron and Clegg, give us some cakes and ale
This article first appeared in the Yorkshire Post newspaper on April 5th 2010, and can be seen on the Yorksire Post website During the English Civil...
Toyota crisis: leadership on the line
Toyota’s leadership team are still struggling with one of the most intriguing – and dangerous – challenges to face a major global corporation in...
No White House at Westminster: the Norman kings’ architectural legacy
If you were called upon to describe one visual image that defines the city of London – one skyline – I would guess that it would be the Palace of...
Do you want to live forever? Frederick the Great and Starship Trooper
The great eighteenth century warrior-king, Frederick the Great of Prussia, was fighting the Austrians at Kolin, near Prague, in 1757 during the...
Toyota leadership crisis? A view from the UK
Jack Welch, (CEO of America’s General Electric Company from 1981-2001) came up with the most succinct and compelling description of crisis...
Gerstner and the IBM turnaround: vision or execution?
When he arrived at IBM , Gerstner said to a press conference in July 1993, after his first 100 days, ‘There’s been a lot of speculation as to when...
Carly Fiorina and the HP Compaq merger
Carly Fiorina and the HP Compaq merger In September 2001, Hewlett Packard’s gutsy new CEO, Carly Fiorina – ‘the most powerful woman in business,’...
Carly Fiorina’s change programme at HP: “It wasn’t pretty, but it got done.”
Carly Fiorina was employed as the CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP) in July 1999. She drove through a programme of change in the face of what she...
Jack Welch on change and candour (v good) and on ‘differentiation’ (hmm . . .)
Jack Welch was, of course, CEO of America's General Electric corporation (GE) for twenty years, from 1981 to 2001. During his tenure, the...
Napoleon Bonaparte: the best of leaders; the worst of leaders
I must confess that I have a bit of thing about Napoleon. A quick check on Amazon will show you (reassuringly, perhaps, for me) that I am not alone....
The triumph of common sense; John Harvey-Jones and ICI.
One of the most disturbing things about getting older is that it creeps up on you. Things that seem fresh in the memory turn out to have happened...
The loneliness of the Chief Executive Officer: Louis Gerstner and IBM
In his book, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance, Louis V Gerstner, Jr. says a rather moving and also very insightful thing about the psychology of being...
Jack Welch on work-life balance (and turning a blind eye to Jack’s rather obvious lack of expertise in this area)
I can’t help it, but I find a lot to dislike about Jack Welch, chairman and CEO of USA giant, General Electric, from 1981 until 2001. I think it’s...
David Packard’s long shadow
David Packard, who founded the American electronics giant Hewlett-Packard in the nineteen-thirties with his Stanford University pal Bill Hewlett,...
Changing a ‘heritage’ culture: HP and Carly Fiorina
When Carly Fiorina was employed as the CEO of Hewlett Packard in July 1999, her brief was clearly to bring about change. She soon decided that she...