There is a word that is almost entirely absent from business education, and it predicts more of what we say we care about than any of the words we use instead. The word is mattering. Engagement, retention, performance, even leadership effectiveness — the research has been quietly converging for a…
There is a sentence, usually associated with Paul Batalden: “every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets” We return to it often at HAANA Business School for Human Flourishing, because it removes a comfortable illusion. When an organisation reports rising burnout, falling trust, or talented people leaving…
There is a test I do whenever I walk into an organisation for the first time. I do not look at the values on the wall. I do not read the wellbeing strategy. I do not ask about the engagement scores. I watch the first meeting. Who speaks first. Who…
In every meeting I’ve sat in, wellbeing gets nodded at as important, then quietly deprioritised the moment the roadmap gets tight. That’s less a values problem than a question about how the system is actually structured to respond under pressure. Here’s the number worth sitting with: only 9% of employees…
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 Business School for Human Flourishing, 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…
I trained as an astrophysicist before I trained as a manager. That habit of mind has stayed with me. When something is not working, I ask what system produced it. So, when we talk about burnout, disengagement, and the quiet quitting that has now become a global phenomenon, the question…
