By Chris Gandy Sure, none of us are perfect and we all have our foibles of various descriptions. But, I find it interesting though that when I come across a person with a pretty out there bad behaviour, I invariably encounter two or three others in a short space of time with the same behavioural flaws. I guess poor […]
Read All About It – Misleading Conduct Destroying Organisations and Their People
By Chris Gandy As they say in the classics – Ian Sampson and I go back a long long way. We commenced our working careers together and from the outset shared a common interest in people and more specifically how “good people” seem to attract and develop “good people”. And how they also had the […]
Backword … On Misleading Conduct
From Ian Sampson The Misleading Conduct series started out as a few “notes to self” on leadership, based on my own experiences, as well as many years of observing and working with and for leaders in all kinds of organisations. As I shared some of these thoughts with friends, a kind of virtual conversation has […]
Misleading Conduct # 17: Make Day To Day Management A Misery For People
From Ian Sampson In a Wizard of Id comic I once read, the King saunters up to the sculptor chiseling away and says: “I want my new statue to remind the peasants of what I’ve done for them. What should I place in my hand a spear or a sword?” The last panel has the sculptor hanging upside […]
Misleading Conduct #16: Be Flaky On Safety
By Ian Sampson “People are our most important asset and Safety is our number one priority.” ”Yata yata, yata!” as George would say in the Seinfeld series. You can almost see people’s eyes glaze over as the visitors read it on the laminated policy statement in the foyer or the faithful employees sit in the training […]
Misleading Conduct #15: Having a Dysfunctional Home Life
By Ian Sampson As the old saying goes, “Being emotionally crippled is not essential for running a business but it sure helps!” (I just made that old saying up!) So what if your personal life is a mess? What does it matter, so long as you delude yourself that you are keeping up appearances on […]
Misleading Conduct #14 – When Times Get Tough, Lock Yourself Away
By Ian Sampson This misrule sometimes gets interpreted heroically as “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Misleaders, however, have taken this to a new place: when the going gets tough they get going to a never-ending series of crisis sessions, or better yet a secretive crisis strategy meeting where they meet for days […]
Misleading Conduct #13: Control Your Own Schedule And Create Chaos With Others
By Ian Sampson Leaders get to their exalted position by learning to skillfully manage time. After all, time is all we have. So the leader’s time is valuable and needs to be managed. This is usually done by a PA who is often a person who has to be at the leader’s beck and call 24/7, helping […]
Misleading Conduct # 12 : Avoid Interacting With Real People In the Organisation
Especially when there is upset within or changed external conditions, a leader’s job, like the captain of the ship, is to lead from the bridge. The way the misleader sees it, their job is to have their binoculars out, looking at the surrounding conditions. They need to be close to where the controls are, […]
Misleading Conduct # 11 : Applying Organisational Discipline Sloppily and Inconsistently
“Organisational discipline” refers to the body of knowledge which guides how the organisation works. It often includes directional and aspirational statements like visions, missions, goals etc. It might include standard codes of conduct (what some organisations refer to as Rules of Racing and the like). Great organisations develop these disciplines in a consultative way, […]
B-Cause 