Wayne Madden’s Blog

Step 1 in this “Leading to Inspire and Enable Learning” series addressed self-reflection and ensuring that you, as a leader, understand your own bias and readiness. Step 2 addressed creating a safe and accountable environment where open communication can take place and where organization members can embrace disagreement as a welcome process of learning. In this [...]

In my last past, I introduced the first step in the processing of becoming an effective leader of a learning organization – self-reflection to ensure that you are considering your style, any biases you might be bringing to the table, and your readiness to commit to engaging the whole organization in learning. The next step [...]

Building a Learning Organization is a significant investment, not so much in money, as in the investment of time, human capital, honing skills, and energy. Like many initiatives in an organization, if the investment does not start at the top with the organization’s top executive, then the likelihood of success diminishes substantially. Today, I want [...]

How do we judge whether an organization is effective or not? – stock price, (i hope not), how much the CEO makes (haha!), good commercials? (better that the first two choices), profits (too likely), products (probably). Today, unfortunately, it would seem that public companies or those owned by private equity investors are too often driven by short-term [...]

Jack Welch once said, “Change has no constituency.” He is so right. No one truly jumps easily on board as a willing constituent of change. One of the most attractive elements of the learning organization to me is that a true learning organization has the potential to eliminate the “episodic” nature of change, the action [...]

In my last post, Two Common Obstructions to Building a Learning Organization – Part 1, I covered the first of the common impediments to building a learning organization — examples of some current management practices. Today, I want to talk about some specific learning disabilities that might exist in the culture of the organization or [...]

In my last post, I introduced (or perhaps re-introduced) you to the concept of a “learning organization.” In today’s post, I want to introduce two broad types of obstructions or impediments you may discover along the way if you want to transform your organization into a learning organization – current management practices and norms, and [...]

What did Herb Brooks and that famous Olympic hockey team do that was so special? Well, okay, they beat the Russians and won the Olympic gold medal against all expectations. I remember watching that team play and cheering and celebrating with them and the USA for that victory. However, underneath [...]

At the heart of strategic planning is the process of creating the strategic objectives that you want to accomplish and also that serve as the guiding lights for the organization for some significant period of time. These objectives are significant for so many reasons. They should be easy to understand and engage your organization. They [...]

In my last post, I presented a quadrant analysis of Leadership. In today’s post, I want to take a look along similar axis (vision and effectiveness) but in terms of overall organization effectiveness. Before jumping into the discussion of each quadrant, I want to introduce the “PAEI” letters you see above in case you are [...]

Effective leadership is very much about clearly seeing, seeking, and continually executing change for the better. Life is about change. Whether leading your own life, leading a small group, or leading an organization, there will be problems or opportunities, then solutions, then change, then more problems and opportunities, more solutions, more change, and so on [...]

As I have commented on before, one of the most common mistakes in strategic planning occurs when only senior managers, or those in the “ivory tower” is the “ivory tower,” come up with a plan in total privacy and secrecy and then make the “big announcement” to the company. In fact, I would be willing [...]