News & Articles

Thank you to Liz Guthridge for her thoughtful review of NAVIGATE THE SWIRL. Her comments include: “This book is a gift for managing the intricacies of today’s business world. I plan to use the book with college students, If they can learn to navigate the swirl while building high-performance teams,…

Growth in an organization—just like growth in a child—has a natural pathway and order. Don’t fight that flow. Part of the job of a leader is to understand it better and find ways to support and encourage it.   Read More

Companies are social systems, not machines. Employees are not interchangeable like machine parts. When you understand this, it becomes easier to define the constraints facing your business and find solutions. Listen to a recent conversation I had with Firms Consulting about this topic and more:

Is change coming so fast that you and your team can't  keep up? Listen to my recent conversation with Kevin Eickenberry about how to rise above the chaos and transform your team into a smoothly functioning, high performance powerhouse.

Create the Best TeamToo many people live with a gnawing feeling that their team and, indeed, their entire organization could and should run more smoothly, more purposefully, and more effectively. But they are unable to actualize it amidst the daily Swirl, contends business and strategy expert Richard S. Hawkes, CEO…

By Martin Zwilling | May 20, 2022 Building and transforming organizational teams is far more complicated than building products.  In my experience as a business advisor, most organizations, large and small, struggle to keep up with the pace of change and competitive forces today. You may have a brilliant product…

by Richard S. Hawkes | May 2, 2022 How many meetings have you been in that caused you to ask yourself, “Why am I here? What am I doing? What’s the purpose of this meeting? Are we accomplishing anything?” I call this “The Swirl.” High activity, low focus. Intense motion,…

By Richard Hawkes | March 31, 2022 CEO World Magazine Sometimes people talk about their business’s competitive advantage like it is a thing or collection of things—see that shiny thing, it is the source of our competitive advantage.You will hear comments like “our competitive advantage is customer loyalty” or “economies of scale”…

by Richard S. Hawkes | April 14, 2022 HR Magazine Creative tension is essential to high performing teams The amount of ink that has been spilled in an effort to improve the performance of teams is daunting. And yet, we forge ahead. Why? Because any little advantage in the quality…