by Esther Derby | Dec 9, 2025 | Leadership & Management
When people in your company feel like they can’t speak up, everyone loses. Manager don’t learn about problems until those problems are too big to hide. Managers and teams alike miss out on ideas, different points of view, concerns, and risks. Employees feel less...
by Esther Derby | Jan 18, 2022 | Organizational Change, Systems and Complexity
How do you create an environment for great work? Where healthy self-organization happens? You notice and shape patterns. Patterns are meaningful events that repeat over time—actions and interactions, outcomes and results. That might be teams that flail and fail to...
by Esther Derby | May 12, 2020 | Leadership & Management, Organizational Change, Systems and Complexity
When I say “work on system,” I mean influencing factors that contribute to patterns of events and interactions in your organization. Making work work better. So, how do you work on the system? Attend to creating an environment where great work is a...
by Esther Derby | Mar 30, 2020 | Collaboration & Teams, Leadership & Management
On the first day of widespread work from home brought about by the pandemic, I heard a workplace “expert” talking about the new reality of remote work. “Performance expectations and standards must remain the same as in the office,” he declared. There is so much wrong...
by Esther Derby | Dec 23, 2019 | Leadership & Management
This time of year is associated with giving gifts to others. But I think it is also a good time to think about the gifts we can give ourselves. One that we can all afford is the gift of reflection time. Let me tell you a story. I have a friend, Jen, who is a pure...
