The Change Agents’ Prayer
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. The Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) is the real title… Being frustrated with bureaucracy is part of […]
Read More
Being Our Best Selves
Why do we wait until people die to tell them about the difference they have made in our lives? Living Eulogies are a way of sharing our appreciation for the difference others have made in our lives… while they are still […]
Read More
Strategies to Sustain Yourself as a Change Agent
You had a work project you were passionate about once. Do you remember? You should do. You spent all your waking hours thinking about it. Developing the idea. Asking advice and help from others. Improving it, advocating for it. And […]
Read More
4 Efficient Steps To a Positive Culture
Creating organizational culture change can be hard. We may not initially have the skills we need. We have to sustain our energy and commitment to the change process, while continuing to fulfill our other job responsibilities well. We have to […]
Read More
Please Reject My Idea
When was the last time you made a proposal at work that was rejected? Was it quickly out of hand? Or was it “death by a thousand cuts”? This experience has happened to almost everyone at work. Depending on how […]
Read More
Everyday Courage in Organizations
When you think about courage at work, what comes to mind? Maybe it is fire fighters going into a crumbling, burning building to rescue people. Or our armed services deployed overseas, facing the threat of injury or death every day. […]
Read More
Can You Create Change From the Bottom Up?
An interview with the awesome Michelle McQuaid. Originally at www.michellemcquaid.com Do you lack the authority to create the kind of positive changes you’d love to see in your workplace? Have you tried to get leaders on board and had no […]
Read More
How to Make Your Company a Force For Good
Chris White On How You Can Make Your Company A Force For Good Christopher J. White is Managing Director of the Center for Positive Organizations and adjunct faculty in Management & Organizations at the University of Michigan's Ross School of […]
Read More
In Defense of Doers
Leadership experts make it sound easy: “Follow these simple steps and you will have amazing results!” The typical format is somewhat formulaic. With poise and pithy quotes, we deliver our sticky stories. We boil down thousands of hours of research […]
Read More
Interview with David Burkus
In this interview, we talk about how to make even large, established companies a force for good through social intrapreneurship.
Read More
Four Vital Levers to Sell Your Ideas Internally
There is a huge opportunity cost embedded in our highly bureaucratic organizations. Consider a story that Milan Samani, founder of the Intrapreneur Lab, shared with me recently: A group of senior employees at a big pharmaceutical company saw an alternative […]
Read More
Lead Positive Change Without Authority
What factors should you consider in order to make your next change initiative successful? Jerry Davis and I did the Positive Links session this month.
Read More
Changing Your Company From the Inside Out
How do you create positive change without authority in organizations? Jerry Davis, Kevin Thompson and I provided the closing keynote at the 2015 Positive Business Conference at the Ross School of Business. The talk is based on the book Jerry […]
Read More
3 Steps to Boost Your Leadership Development
As a leader addressing 500 people whose opinions mattered to me, I started to clam up. Many of you are familiar with that peculiarly palms-sweating, heart-thumping, throat-choking form of social anxiety: the fear of public speaking. Somehow, I stumbled through […]
Read More
The New Face of Corporate Activism
From the Arab Spring to the protests in Baltimore, social movements have become a pervasive feature of contemporary society. Moreover, activists are increasingly targeting companies and even nonprofits. Although this environment creates new challenges for business, it also presents […]
Read More