All posts by YolandeDemirian

The neuroscience of trust Companies are twisting themselves into knots to empower and challenge their employees. They’re anxious about the sad state of engagement, and rightly so, given the value they’re losing. Consider Gallup’s meta-analysis of decades’ worth of data: It shows that high engagement—defined largely as having a strong connection with one’s work and colleagues, feeling like a real contributor, and enjoying ample chances to learn—consistently leads to positive outcomes for both individuals and organizations. The rewards include higher productivity, better-quality products, and increased profitability. So it’s clear that creating an employee-centric culture can be good for business. But how do you do that effectively? Culture is typically designed […]

Theory U and opticism “A case for optimism” is an inspiring video by Tiffany Shlain. Opticism is optimism with a healthy dose of skepticism: a “questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere.” Let’s become an “opticist”: Let’s not be naive, but let’s focus consciously on the half full glass and see how we can fill it even further… The world in general has become less violent, but watching the news things seem to have become worse. When we look at negative things all the time, they could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We may become discouraged and act […]

Cultivating Collaboration: Don’t Be So Defensive! / Jim Tamm Ever see red? It’s called being defensive, and turns out, it is the single greatest inhibitor to true collaboration. Jim Tamm shares years of experience in getting out of the red zone and cultivating a “green zone” attitude. Jim Tamm is a former law professor and senior administrative law judge for the state of California. He mediated nearly 2,000 employment disputes and handed down legal decisions that impacted national labor policy. He’s worked for 40 years in the field of alliance building and conflict resolution, and is an expert in building collaborative workplace environments. He’s the author of “Radical Collaboration,” published […]

Plénitude As described in an earlier blog post, we visited Frederic Laloux earlier this year in Brussels. This meeting was nothing like you would expect a meeting to be like. The first sign that it was going to be different was the fact that we were invited to share a dinner with him and his wife at their home. So, we headed towards Brussels with our stomachs empty and our heads filled with expectations. Once we arrived in Brussels at his doorstep, Frederic enthusiastically opened the door and welcomed us in. We entered the house and met Helene, his wife, in the living room. According to Dutch habit, we went out to greet her with […]

Morning star’s success story Here’s a company that was on our Bucket List as one of the very first: The Morning Star Company. With a 10% market share Morning Star is the largest tomato processor in the world. Their unique way of working has been extensively described in well-known publications such as the Harvard Business Review and Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations. It is a prime example of a successful self-managing organization with some unique practices in place. The post is a bit longer than what you are used to here, but we didn’t want to shorten it or break it up into two parts. As there’s nothing we want to keep […]