Leadership Icons Frances R. Hesselbein and Peter F. Drucker – A Legacy of Shared Leadership
by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim

Frances Hesselbein, whose leadership of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America from 1976 to 1990 turned a failing not-for-profit into one of the greatest socially serving institutions of the 20th and 21st centuries, died on December 11th, 2022 at her home in Easton, PA.  Surrounded by loved ones, she was 107. Throughout her storied career, Frances Hesselbein often changed the life of a Girl Scout, an aspiring student, a military officer, or a business executive with a single conversation.[…]

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How Purpose Drives Performance  
by Jean-Philippe Courtois

“The two most important days of your life are the day you’re born and the day you understand why” – Mark Twain

Purpose matters to all of us: it’s a key factor in our physical and mental wellbeing. As humans, finding our ‘why’ is important. When we understand our purpose and live it, we make a positive difference to ourselves and to those around us, and we change the world for the better. It’s exactly the same for organizations.[…]

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Looking Inward to Drive Outperformance
by Alex Adamopoulos

Peter Drucker once said, “if you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.” The simplicity of Drucker’s dialogue seems always to cast a shadow over the depths of the words he said. 

In the wake of past and ongoing hardships—the pandemic, labor shortages, supply-chain instability and inflation—businesses continue to adjust while looking for something new to keep up with quickly evolving market and consumer demands.

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Evolving Ecosystem Guidance
by Bill Fischer

“Water! Build your organizations so that they move like water.”
This advice from Haier’s Chairman Emeritus, Zhang Ruimin, began a search for useful guidance for treating ecosystem engagement as a strategic asset for the future. Ecosystems are an ageless phenomenon, newly rediscovered for commercial purposes, by James F. Moore, in 1993. Once multi-geographic trade began, the ancient world was held together by interwoven threads of economic activity. As these linkages became more reliable, ecosystems bloomed.[…]

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Killing it on Innovation
by Annika Steiber

The forces of change are gaining momentum. In the past Industrial Age, companies had to contend with dramatic changes but these were relatively infrequent and gradual. Today’s environment presents a different sort of playing field for every institution. They are all faced with a constantly swirling cloud of change. As a result, every institution is surrounded by unpredictable innovations, shifts in the marketplace and other events that can quickly render a long-reliable strategy obsolete.  Furthermore, new competitors can emerge from seemingly nowhere.[…]

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How far can research take us? Solving wicked problems with appropriate KPIs
by Sylwia Sysko-Romańczuk

Starting a panel discussion at Global Peter Drucker Forum 2021, Helga Novotny elaborated on the vast horizon of challenges faced by the global science in the 21st century. The academic community has been observing a rise in complexity: from tech finance speeding the banking systems to the climate changes speeding the economic systems. Complex systems reveal three inherent properties:[…]

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