I saw a great presentation this morning by Andrew Soren, an internal leadership consultant at BMO Financial. His topic was resilience, which—as he admits—is a bit of a loaded term. Unpacking his particular emphasis in usage (which itself draws on a pretty large literature out of the positive psychology movement), resilience explores how we overcome […]
Exercising Agency: How Do I Develop Agency?
While we have explored what actually constitutes agency, and illustrated it with examples, a fundamental question is how it emerges. How exactly do individuals develop the ability to exercise agency?
Exercising Agency: What To Do When Politics Gets In The Way
Politics is a challenging concept. We tend to view the term ‘organizational politics’ negatively, often seeing it as competitive, antagonistic, manipulative and dysfunctional. Certainly organizational politics can be all of these things, but it doesn’t have to be.
Agency Illustrated: Breaking Out Of The Box
In a post last week, I explored in depth the question of what constitutes “agency.” I build on that here as a result of a bit of awesome serendipity, courtesy of Apple’s Tim Cook.
Exercising Agency: What To Do When Process Gets In The Way
While most organizations claim to have formal processes for project initiation, in a large number of instances these do not lead to better initiation decisions. The challenge is what to do when faced with ineffective process.
Process, Politics and Agency: Are They Mutually Exclusive?
A question that was raised in the book launch was whether or not these ideas were mutually exclusive. The specific query was, “Don’t most organizations use all three methods? I can see my organization doing all three, each with specific projects and departments.”