Food for Thoughts from Gugin
Read all our blog postsThe Gugin blog posts on how you can create a better, more agile and more competitive corporate culture are all here
Why Brexit might be the best thing that has happened to Europe in 30 years
The broken Family in Europe Imagine you belong to a big diversified family in Europe, where each part of the family lives in different places, do different things for a living, have different political perspectives and belong to different social groups. When you all...
3 Topics all Leaders should have on their Radar Screen in 2022
Leaders are often so tied up with short-term issues that they don’t see the iceberg in front of them. Here are 3 topics that should be on their radar screen.
How working from home may damage your company culture
This article is about how working from home can damage your corporate culture. The money saved on sending people home because of COVID19 can easily be lost due to lover employee - and customer satisfaction. Read on The Excitement Many office workers around the world...
Changing Corporate Culture With Cultural Nudging
What is Cultural Nudging Cultural nudging is a concept where we can alter people's behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding them to choose other options. It is used a lot in architecture where you want people to move in a specific way and pace in a building....
Why Business Leaders shouldn’t run Countries
We often hear the argument that a country should be run like a business. We hear that politicians are talentless and that they have no knowledge about the real life. The people who are standing on the side shouting this are usually people who are (or claim to be)...
How much cultural Intelligence do you have?
Look carefully at the image above. What do you pay attention to first, the different colours or the similar shapes? If you see the different colours first it means that you have a preference for looking for differences before you see similarities. If, however, you see...
I just say things as they are…
"I just say things as they are" is a phrase you might hear quite often. Maybe even without paying attention to it. If you - as we do in Gugin work with leadership development, conflict reconciliation and cultural identities you DO pay attention to phrases like that....
Can you do too much for your employees?
We raise the question because we did a large survey for a client last month that gave some surprising results - results that will require some further research - for sure, but we will disclose the conclusions with you in this article. We have anonymised the name and...
From FOMO to JOMO :: A paradigm shift in our view on Social Media
Relax; FOMO is fading away FOMO, which is the "Fear Of Missing Out" has for many years been the key enabler for our use of Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. You have probably read stories about people who got depressed over not being a part of an...
The Object Oriented Organisation – The new paradigm in organisation theory
Introduction to the Object Oriented Organisation During the years working with companies around the world, I have paid attention to several organisational dilemmas primarily caused by the globalisation, the global distribution of work and the fact that we directly or...
How creative are you? And how do you turn it into innovation?
We often hear about the need for being creative. We even have a so-called creative class. It is usually people ( all dressed in black ) working in the advertising industry. They claim they have unique skills when it comes to creativity and they are excellent at luring...
Cultural challenges in the healthcare industry are blocking innovation and service improvements
The cultural challenges in the healthcare industry have to be addressed I am writing this article because I have received a number of questions and requests for help lately from companies in the healthcare industry about how to deal with cultural challenges in the...
Cross-Cultural Team Development in the Southern French Alps
Develop your team's intercultural competencies in one of Europe's largest nature reserves, Parc National du Mercantour. We can learn so much from nature and we want you to use wild nature as inspiration for your own and your team's development. For many years, Gugin...
Why leaving Facebook is the right thing to do
Why leaving Facebook is the right thing to do This article is about why I closed my Facebook account 2 months ago and why I feel it is one of the best decisions I have made in a very long time I actually started writing this article before Facebook fell down from the...
Artificial Intelligence :: How not to destroy your company culture
chatGPT sparked the AI race into warp speed leaving companies, legislators and everyone else partly paralysed about what that is going to mean to everything we know. Gugin has helped companies create the right company cultures for more than 20 years. We have never...
Competitive advantage – a new way of calculating it
Learn how to calculate the competitive advantage derived from cultural diversity, cultural intelligence and innovation.
#competitiveadvantage #innovation #diversity #leadership
Cultural fit or Skills? What is most important when hiring people?
Cultural fit or skills – what is most important when you hire people? You will probably say both, but which one comes first? Do you start by looking for people who culturally fit into your organisation or do you start by looking for specific skills for a specific job?
Be Global in anything you do everywhere in the world
It seems Hamlet is not alone with his whim. Born from a genius mind four centuries ago, it still holds true to describe one of the most difficult processes for any human being: Decision Making. It can be as complex as a multinational acquisition or as simple as what...
United Airlines corporate culture – a patient to be examined
The United Airlines corporate culture exposed When a Kentucky physician was dragged off a United Airlines plane it naturally created headlines around the world as it was an incomprehensible act, which didn't make sense to anybody. If it had been a violent passenger or...
Fear as a Management tool? – Take the Survey
How often do you use fear to motivate? In the Gugin Research Team, we are about to start researching on how, when and why we as managers use fear as a management tool. Our preliminary research shows that some use it often, others never but almost everyone we have...
Cultural Audit – Get the truth about your organisation
Cultural Audit - Discover the truth about your organisation Introduction Cultural audit is the process where we describe all the aspects of a particular organisational culture. Gugin has developed and refined a comprehensive framework that gives us all the insight we...
Which Rules are you ready to break to be considered a Leader?
I gave my students in “Leadership across Cultures” the exam question: “Which rules and norms will you break in order to be considered a leader?” This article covers some of the findings and delivers a glimpse of what future employers can expect from ambitious american students
How to successfully screw up a business meeting
It happens all the time - we screw up a business meeting. We have an important business meeting coming up (first meeting with mother-in-law included) and we need it go well. We are well-prepared. We know all the numbers forward and backwards, we have our sales pitches...
How a bank discovered that banking wasn’t its core competence
This article is about what can happen when you look at your company's culture and core competencies with an open mind. It is also about having the courage as a leader to make drastic decisions in order to leverage your company's culture in the very best way. A...