Today it was an insightful day in the structures of an organization. The delivery of the class was interesting…it was like going to a film club. We watched scenes from “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest” where to avoid prison McMurphy pretends to be insane and serves time in an asylum ward controlled...

Today while a group was being coached by media professionals, others played a team building game where a group of us seating around a table was given a set of shapes – two pieces were missing from the set and we had to identify the missing pieces in 30 minutes. Piece of cake you would say…yeah, right…...

MBTI Ever heard of Myers-Briggs personality type indicators? Well, they are very popular tools to assess what your preferences are in terms of how you express yourself. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument was developed by Isabel Myers and Katharina Briggs as an application of Carl Jung’s...

Phil Collin’s “You can’t hurry love” is one of my favourite songs of the ’80s. And it is a song that came to mind as I woke up thinking abour organizational change. Well…read on, they do have something in common. Phil Collins says “My mama said You cant hurry...

We were given the task of designing a communication plan to convince a group of (very stubborn) leaders and managers of a company to implement a new system in their company. It was a computer simulated exercise, we were given an organigram, some clues about the individuals, a credit of 120 days to convince...

Today was a fun day, one in which we could spend the time looking at ourselves, and our styles. Our seating arrangement was very different from the previous day….and we were told….the arrangement has a meaning. In preparation for the course we had to fill a questionnaire, many questions probing...

OK, in our line of work we are so used to jargon that we do not even question anymore what an MTP is, who is on the TMT, your next EPMR….the list could go on…. but in a training where you are lucky enough to sit with people who come from different backgrounds, the basic assumptions get questioned…so...

- “Visitors are informed that in the United Kingdom traffic drives on the left-hand side of the road. In the interest of safety, you are advised to practice this in your country of origin for a week or two before driving in the UK”…. uh? (Road Safety Act 2006) - Try to break a piece...

Today was the day of culture, one when we looked at how cultures can influence an organization. We studied the cases of IBM and WWF. Some of the nuggets.. Culture is inherited wisdom, allows you to stand on the shoulder of the giant, but be careful to keep it alive! The best way to change culture may...

I am at IMD, a leading business school based in Lausanne, Switzerland participating in the CGIAR Senior leadership course. There are about 35 of us, coming from over 20 countries, not all from the CGIAR centers, a number of national partners are here too. It is a great gathering of interesting people....