by beCause beCause Global Associate Peter Cook, CEO Human Dynamics, – Collaboration is becoming a business as usual model for doing unusually good business in an increasingly connected world. Just consider these examples: For the first time in history, pharmaceutical companies are collaborating to pool their resources and information against consumer demand for greater transparency and the sheer costs of developing life-saving drugs. Social and economic pressure for these changes is enabled by the internet and our ability to process large volumes of data for advances in medical science that ultimately benefit the whole world. Companies as diverse as Coca Cola and Heinz, Corning and Sharp are collaborating to devise products that provide superior benefits for their clients and customers. In... more

I am honored to have Tech-Geekista Nikki Longo write the following guest post on power of social media: “In an eye-opening experiment conducted earlier this year, Facebook encouraged its users to become organ donors. The response was nothing short of a miracle, as organ donor registration increased by 3,012 donors on the first day of the campaign. That uptick accounted for a 2000% increase in daily donor registrations. Today, charitable organizations often use crowdsourcing via social networks like Kickstarter to fund their initiatives. Crowdsourcing in its most basic sense is receiving services, ideas, financial donations, or content by seeking contributions from a large group of people. In recent years, social media has helped nonprofit organizations find that delicate balance of asking... more

I’m honored to have this guest post from Peter Cook, renowned author of five books on business leadership and creativity. In his latest book “The Music of Business”, he draws parallel lessons from the world of music and relates them to his MBA and his work as a business consultant. I asked him some questions about some of my favorite musical artists at the end. Here’s what he had to say about the book. What can you learn about creativity and innovation from The Beatles and David Bowie? What can Lady Gaga teach you about Business Strategy and using Social Media positively? Can a study of Jazz help you beat the competition? What can Spinal Tap, Deep Purple and Led... more

by beCause CEO Nadine Hack – I love that quote from Rainer Maria Rilke.  Every spring, as new life blooms, I think about how all cultures honor rebirth and regeneration.  Christians celebrate Easter about resurrection and new hope; Jews celebrate Passover about liberation and renewal; Muslims celebrate Mawlid al-Nabi honoring the Prophet Muhammad’s birth; Buddhists celebrate Purnima, the birth of Budha; Hindus celebrate Baisakhi, the start of their new year.  This spring what are you doing that is a new blossoming for you?  I rejoice in the new experiences life continues to offer me.  I gave a TEDx talk in Geneva “Adversaries to Allies” and you can click to watch it now. My guests on a Trust Across America program... more

The best strategic plans and/or state-of-the-art technologies are only as good as the people who actually execute them. Long-established research shows that people yearn most powerfully for human connections. More recent scientific studies using mathematics show that an ability to cooperate is the secret of humanity’s success. So, when we help our leaders and teams know how to engage with a broad stakeholder spectrum we give them tools to reach their greatest potential. Neuroscience research supports that deep relationships with stakeholders are vital to success. Studies show that the combined levels of engagement of your employees and customers have an outsized effect on your performance. Thus, creating and sustaining SRE – multi-directional, emotionally deep, profoundly trusting relationships that unleash people’s... more

On June 24 I gave the closing remarks at the UN Global Learning Managers Forum (LMF) in Turin, Italy on the social responsibility of learning, training and staff development in global organizations.  It was an absolutely stellar learning platform: the calibre of content and structure was at the very highest standards to allow for a truly great knowledge exchange among 39 Learning Managers from 35 UN Agencies globally. Before I facilitated a discussion on how they each might best engage their respective internal and external stakeholders, I observed as they shared with each other in various modules on a broad spectrum of important topics.  They are at the cutting edge of utilizing new technologies to reach staff throughout the  world. While the politics... more

An airline company sues an online ticket provider. Fishermen from the Gulf pay a visit to an oil firm in London. An investment brokerage is accused of misleading government. Today’s headlines could be quite different if more companies embraced efforts to engage stakeholders.  Why should you care about engagement?  More enterprises understand that a broader spectrum of internal and external stakeholders has a direct impact on their core business. Those that have engendered deep levels of engagement – what I call strategic relational engagement (SRE) – are far more successful in shaping that impact to their advantage. Neuroscience research supports experience that profound relationships with stakeholders are vital to business success. Other studies show how employee and customer engagement are intimately... more

Listening to international musicians improvize at the Cully Jazz Festival  I thought about the “beautiful music” made through the interactions of 28 senior executives from 19 countries representing 15 industries during the IMD program Advanced Strategic Management.  Each ASM participant entered the program determined to design the best solution to a concrete business challenge they faced.  They left not only as individuals each with his or her own finely honed action plan, but also as a team of  executives who indeed made beautiful music together through helping each other.   And, as I led my session first at ASM and then for the full IMD community on the importance of Highly Relational Engagement of Stakeholders – internal and external – for creating long-term value, I also experienced how through our engaged dialogue we too created unique and beautiful music since it is... more

The most profound relationships form and sustain when someone connects deeply and then continues to nurture those connections.  At IMD in this last week 300 international leaders gather for a women’s leadership conference, hundreds of executives from virtually every country participate in executive education modules – Advanced Strategic Management ASM, High Performance Leadership HPL and Program for Executive Development PED –  for several of which I led sessions.  In this same time frame, my school friend of nearly 50 years who has lived, worked and raised her multi-racial, multi-national children, multi-lingual around the world visits our home in Lutry.  We share an evening with two friends we’ve known for over 25 years, now respectively the US Ambassador to the UN Geneva and the UN Indpendent Expert on... more