It has been 20 years since someone first pointed out that we are living in a VUCA world. What started as a military term describing the post-Cold War environment has been adopted to describe the competitive markets most companies face today. The “U” in VUCA stands for “uncertainty,” and ironically, the one certain thing about […]

The Designing Leaders team is in Japan for the next week, with stops in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. It’s been over a year since we last sent people here, and nearly 10 years since one of us first visited, and so as you can imagine there are plenty of things that have changed. One thing […]

Just because your employees are sticking with you for now does not mean they’re happy; it may just mean they are afraid to jump out of their comfort zone and look for something else. Ultimately, though, they may decide to leave, or take other actions that hurt your organization. Employee engagement — measured by such […]

Marathon runners have many sayings, one of which is “The race truly begins when you are ready to quit.” The point here is that when you feel like giving up, that’s when you need to dig deep and call upon all the strength you have. Nobody wants to stop 10 kilometers from the Finish, so […]

Talking recently with an experienced employee in Malaysia’s creative industries, he told us about a certain type of person he had been dealing with lately. As he moved from assignment to assignment he kept encountering supervisors who seemed closed-minded and who had attitudes suggesting that they, and only they, knew everything, and didn’t want to […]