The Joys and Woes

Corporate life should not be particularly complicated. If blessed with a reasonably strong brand that you can energize, a decent product or service that you can make more competitive or differentiate further, a pool of talent that can be mobilized and enrolled to do meaningful work professionally and who are invited to share ideas on how to make our collective fortunes better, ways of going to market that can be simplified and made more impactful, and a customer base so often yearning to be served with both imagination and dignity, this is a fascinating adventure! Yet, we riddle corporate life with double talk, undermine colleagues, tarnish our brands, erode our competitiveness, ignore market warnings, frustrate our talent pool, irritate customers, and confound stakeholders, and hang onto the illusory "grail" of control, by which the death rattle of more than one corporate venture has been instigated. There is a "leadership virus," a sad pathology that makes what should be an exciting fulfillment into a "dramatic soul sapping challenge." And so, strengthening the personal and collective leadership immune system, restoring sanity and healthy leadership and team reflexes, so the culture can throw off these interlopers and get back to vital engagement, is always a great idea.