What if leadership focused less on fixing what is wrong and more on amplifying what is already working? Traditional approaches to organisational challenges can leave people focused on deficits, problems and what needs to be fixed. Appreciative Inquiry offers a different possibility. Developed by David Cooperrider and Ronald Fry, Appreciative…
When I studied Astrophysics between 1989 and 1995, I occasionally had lunch with my professor, sitting at the same table in the university canteen. When I told my father, he was both surprised and amazed. He could hardly believe that his son was sharing a table with a professor. To…
At HAANA Institute for Leadership and Wellbeing, we work with a premise that is unusual in leadership education: an organisation is what it is made of. Its declarations come later, and they matter less. An organisation is built from materials, substances, just as real as steel or concrete, though they…
Year after year, surveys reveal that a large percentage of employees worldwide are dissatisfied with or unhappy in their jobs. But what lies behind this reality? Many people point to poor leadership, excessive profit orientation, command-and-control management, and similar factors. However, are these truly the root causes, or merely visible…
Prologue: This story is inspired by European history but is applicable to organisations and businesses around the world. During the Middle Ages, the Norsemen are often remembered for their fierce and uncompromising nature. Yet there is one important thing that today’s senior executives and other organisational leaders can, and should,…
It sounds like a small question. It is not. The dominant answer in management education has been remarkably consistent for fifty years. A leader sets direction, makes decisions, and ensures execution. The leader is the agent. The organisation is the instrument. Things happen because the leader makes them happen. This…
Entrepreneurship is often associated with ambition, innovation, and relentless action. Yet behind every successful entrepreneur lies something deeper: sustaining wellbeing while navigating uncertainty and growth. Research on entrepreneurial success has identified common characteristics among high-performers: passion, preparedness, assertiveness, self-motivation, perseverance, an internal locus of control, and a willingness to take…
Most of what damages people at work is not dramatic. It is procedural. The meeting with no clear purpose. The decision made in a side conversation and announced as if everyone agreed. The feedback loop that travels in only one direction. The performance review designed by someone who never had…
There is a sentence that runs through everything we are building at HAANA: Wellbeing is not something we add to systems. It is something we design systems for. For many years I have found myself returning to a question that appears, in one form or another, wherever people come together to…
Before I became a Chief Wellbeing Officer, I trained in Lean Six Sigma. And something always stood out to me in that world: my colleagues were never just looking for systems and tools. They wanted those systems to actually work. And they knew that meant engaging people, not just optimising…
