People often lament the qualities and capability of their leaders, political, civil, religious or otherwise. Indeed, they are regularly viewed with what has become known as the three D’s of leadership—doubt, distrust and dissent. Yet, in times of uncertainty, turbulence and crises, we crave the control and order that come with formal leadership structures and willingly submit to their authority. How can we explain the sudden switch?[…]
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The most effective leaders of the future will be those who have the most powerful and inspiring questions and who are willing to acknowledge they don’t have the answers, and that they need and want help in finding the answers. It’s in sharp contrast to the conventional view of leaders as the ones who have the answers to all the questions[…]
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The year 2020 has put us through a lot, but in doing so created settings for effective leaders to have real impact. Who has stepped up to the challenge and who has stumbled: What broad lessons in leadership can we take away from this annus horribilus?[…]
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Two years ago I had the privilege of meeting Tim Brown in Vienna, the godfather of design thinking. At this year’s Global Drucker Forum this year we listened to his views on how creativity and design thinking can help us navigate the global crisis and find new paths to a brighter future[…]
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Following the business news in the weeks after this year’s Drucker Forum, it became clear that management, as taught at business schools, is headed for irrelevance. Today it no longer solves problems. It creates them. So-called “best practices” of management have caused a multitude of problems that only became apparent after a delay of decades, but are now making themselves felt with force[…]
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The quality of leadership is important for a well-working society. Still, good leaders seem to be rare according to Raymond Hofmann. A poll of the participants seemed to bear out his assumption, as 93% voted that there is a leadership problem in the world[…]
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What is leadership, what are leaders for, and are leaders and managers really the same thing? This was the starting point of a lively discussion moderated by HBR’s Ania Wieckowski. She opened by noting that in any forum the debate around leadership vs management quickly becomes heated. These days, she said, leadership activities tend to be more highly regarded than management functions – perhaps because “having a vision” sounds more impressive than supervising.[…]
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