Contagion

Dr Leandro Herrero: Organisations live in two realities at the same time. There is the audio: what the organisation says about itself. It comes through strategies, values, leadership programmes, town halls, intranets, presentations and increasingly polished corporate language. And then there…

Dr Leandro Herrero: Management has spent decades encouraging us to work smarter, not harder. Could AI be the one inviting us to do something rather different. Think harder, not merely work smarter. Artificial Intelligence has generated endless debate about productivity.…

Dr Leandro Herrero: This is plagiarism, of course. I am stealing a line attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel all the time. When necessary, use words.” It is one of the most beautiful paradoxes I know. The…

Dr. Leandro Herrero: We do not see the world as it is. We see it through the beliefs we carry, many of them inherited from those around us. Sometimes these beliefs heal, sometimes they harm, but they almost always shape…

Dr Leandro Herrero: Internal communication has mistaken visibility for causality. The result is an industry optimising messages while behaviour remains stubbornly unchanged. If communicators want a future, they must stop managing information and start shaping what actually spreads. “Most internal…

Dr Leandro Herrero: There is a headstone I keep imagining. Clean granite. Tasteful font. It reads: “He was future-ready”. We have built an entire industry on that headstone. Readiness. This piece could just as well be titled ‘On the absurdity of readiness’.…

Dr Leandro Herrero: For years, organizations talked about culture while quietly distrusting how culture actually works. The result was not confusion, but a persistent blind spot — one that shaped how behaviour was managed, influenced, and misunderstood.  For decades, management…

In the latest edition of the Column we’re now calling Contagion, Dr Leandro Herrero argues that corporate waffle isn’t harmless. It’s a power tactic: it avoids accountability, protects hierarchy, and simulates action. It’s time we stop tolerating it. It’s not…

Dr Leandro Herrero: Leaders love a list of actions. The industry is full of “Ten Things Great Leaders Do Before Breakfast.” But genuine leadership — the real, behavioural, cultural substance — depends as much on what leaders refuse to do. This is…

Dr Leandro Herrero: Culture has been declared dead more times than we can count. Each decade brings its own assassin — strategy, process, leadership, engagement, agility, purpose, wellbeing, now AI. Yet it survives every attempt, reborn under a new name.…

Dr. Leandro Herrero: Some organizations are purposefully designed for their people to be successfully unaccountable. The system will defend itself against the threat of ‘skin in the game’. Turkeys don’t like Christmas. Imagine this scenario. You’re at the airline desk…

Dr. Leandro Herrero: David Graeber, the late anthropologist who died at 59 and was prolific and energetic in his left-wing politics, coined the term “Bullshit Jobs”. He first introduced it in a 2013 viral essay and later expanded it into…