Author: Erika Bjune
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What If Your Job Could Be Anything You Wanted?
At some point in your working life, you’ve probably heard, or even said yourself, “That’s not my job.” Perhaps you’ve encountered or deployed the more polished and weaponized version: “That’s not really in my job description.” In conventional workplaces, these phrases sound reasonable on the surface. People have responsibilities outlined in their job descriptions, and…
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Your Brain on Trust and the Neuroscience of Collaboration
In my last post, “The Science of Collaboration,” I explored the research connecting intentional collaboration to measurable outcomes in wellness, productivity, and business performance. The numbers are compelling, but what I didn’t get into was why collaboration has such a profound effect on how people feel and perform. For that, we need to look at…
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The Science of Collaboration: Why Working Together Makes Us Healthier, Sharper, and More Successful
There’s a reason we feel better after a really good team meeting, the kind where ideas click into place, and everyone walks away energized instead of drained. It turns out that feeling isn’t just anecdotal. A growing body of research shows that collaboration, when done intentionally, goes beyond making work more pleasant. It also makes…
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Five Leadership Tensions You’re Probably Navigating Alone
If you’ve ever felt like leadership is harder than it should be, you’re not imagining things. Most leaders I know aren’t struggling because they lack talent or dedication. They’re struggling because they’re caught between competing forces that no one ever helped them see clearly, let alone navigate. I call these leadership tensions, and after twenty-plus…
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Self-Management Isn’t the Absence of Structure, Just a Different Kind
When people first hear about self-management as an organizational structure, a pretty reliable reaction comes up. It usually sounds something like: So… it’s just chaos? Nobody’s in charge? Anyone can do whatever they want? It’s an understandable assumption. If you remove the org chart, the titles, the manager who approves your decisions and signs off…
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The Art of Collaborative Leadership: Leading and Following at the Same Time
There’s a quiet assumption baked into most of our ideas about leadership that leaders lead, and followers follow, and never the twain shall meet. You’re either at the front of the room or you’re in the seats. You’re either the one with the answers or the one with the questions. Leadership, in this view, is…
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Where Do You Stand in the Power Equation?
Something shifts when you realize you’re standing in a power dynamic you didn’t choose. Maybe it happened this week when a policy changed at work without consultation, when a decision got handed down that affects your team but none of you had a voice in it, when you watched someone in authority dismiss concerns without…
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Building the Bridge to Decentralized Organizations
Last week, a friend sent me a McKinsey Quarterly article titled “A new operating model for a new world.” She leads a very rare and special doctoral program in transpersonal leadership and business at Sofia University, and she has been reading my book, Organizing for Impact. Her message to me, with the article included, contained…
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I’m Struggling to Focus on Anything But Crisis
I have to be honest, the work I’m doing feels rather insignificant given the state of the world at present. I’m struggling to focus on what I consider an important and impactful purpose when everyone, including myself, is not just distracted by but deeply emotionally impacted by the heinous actions and terrifying images coming out…
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Why Hierarchies Struggle to Build Adaptive Organizations
Recent research from Gartner reveals a stunning statistic. Seventy-nine percent of employees don’t trust their organization’s ability to change effectively. The majority believe their organization has made poor change decisions in the past and will likely fail in the future. This goes far deeper than poor change management. Organizations have a legitimacy problem. The same…