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This paper explores the concept of leadership anatomy in a health crisis like Covid-19 as it relates our body parts to sensory connections that affect our response to uncertainty.

In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 leaders and a cross-section of 47 employees drawn from all six business units of a multinational professional service firm. Content analysis of the data led to key implications for leadership practice.

Leading through the anatomy results in a productive tension that awakens the inner voice, helping leaders think, feel, and act in more resilient ways.

Using leadership anatomy as an analogy, we suggest that leaders should learn to connect with their inner senses to develop systems thinking. Such is the ability to make sense of our chaotic surroundings in the way we think, feel, and act.

The significance of this study is the rare moments of leadership behavior captured in the midst of a pandemic that contribute to current debate and direction in leadership research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore adaptive leadership behavior during a global health crisis in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It discusses the characteristics of adaptive leadership and offers practical steps to help managers lead through tough times.

This paper is based on an in-depth study of a mid-sized multinational professional service firm where 25 frontline managers were interviewed. Individual stories about the challenges and opportunities of how these managers led their company out of ambiguity contribute to critical insights as discussed in this paper.

First, leading adaptively involves a fundamental acknowledgment of your vulnerabilities by turning them into a source of inner strength through the support of others. Second, it is important to harness collective wisdom to accelerate urgent and complex decision-making. Third, experimentation is key to breaking away from status quo and venturing into innovative practices. Fourth, following personal instincts while exercising objective judgment could give you the courage to think and act differently.

This paper offers firsthand insights into the mindsets and behaviors of practicing managers who spontaneously shared their deeper feelings and expectations of their leadership setbacks and foresight of what would be expected of the “new” normal in a post-pandemic era. The perspectives offered here provide a deeper dimension to the current understanding of adaptive leadership.

The aim of the paper is to explore leadership behavior as a process of sensing through the connection of various aspects of the self to external dynamics.

The paper is based on an in-depth study of an international technology firm where 36 managers were interviewed. Content analysis was used to interpret the data.

If leaders learn to be more authentic in the way they think, feel, and act, they will be more connected to who they are and what they stand for in the face of uncertainty.

Leaders should embrace adversity as an opportunity to connect more deeply to their inner senses by breaking away from their comfort zones and acting courageously through their decisions.

The paper offers a different understanding of adaptive leadership from the sensing perspective. The firsthand experience of managers challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic offers fresh insights into the study of leadership behavior.

This paper aims to introduce an innovative approach to employee engagement through personalized calls targeted at work-from-home (WFH) employees. It explores the effects of these calls on employee motivation and work behaviour.

The research is based on a case study of a multinational company over a one-year period (2020–2021). In-depth interviewing in the form of engagement calls was used as the primary method of data collection. Seventy-two frontline supervisors were directly involved in calling 1,318 employees totaling 2,671 calls. Content analysis was used to identify key patterns from the data.

The employees experienced varying degrees of WFH transition based on their response to isolation and work-life boundaries. The calls made a difference to their psychological and emotional wellbeing, reaffirming their confidence in the company’s WFH arrangements and reinforcing their self-worth. This led to the employees engaging more proactively through work process improvisation and working around technological challenges. The calls also uncovered unlearning and relearning as a way of helping them make deeper sense of who they are and how they can contribute more valuably to the company.

This longitudinal research offers fresh insights into the transitions of employees at different phases of their WFH experience based on the first-hand accounts of frontline supervisors. Theoretically, the study contributes to a different perspective of employee engagement and work behaviour from the remote working literature in the context of Covid-19.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

How do you cater for Murphy's Law? How do you anticipate or avoid the unforeseeable worst‐case scenario? This is a particularly pertinent question for large complex businesses faced with daily challenges and change. The recent economic meltdown has proved more than ever that organizations need to be aware of such threats, and must develop strategies involving the individual level of the employee in order to adapt to challenging situations. Roland K. Yeo's article “Liberating Murphy's Law” takes a theoretical look at how this may be achieved.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The paper aims to discuss the transformation of a multinational organization, Global Co, through the deployment of an operational excellence system at a time of turbulence and complexity. It illuminates the opportunities and challenges of implementing the system from the perspective of learning and change.

A case study method was utilized in the research based on a four-year longitudinal study. Formal and informal interviews, unobtrusive observations and archival records formed the core of the data collection that led to key insights reported in this paper.

A structured approach to managing work processes is essential for ensuring efficiency and reliability in work output. Performance improvement is sustained by operational discipline that strives for consistency in daily work practices. Organizations develop self-healing mechanisms to help address work-related gaps and issues, turning constraints into enablers for improvement.

The paper provides a wider dimension of organizational performance from the learning and change perspective. It considers organizations as organisms with self-healing properties supported by operational discipline. It redefines the impact of operational excellence through organizational significance.

This paper seeks to examine learning groups as complex systems and to address three issues about learning in organizations: learning from change; factors affecting learning; and learning leading to growth and renewal.

A case study was conducted at a Singapore Engineering firm to explore its two‐year change intervention experiences. Data were gathered at two stages: laddering, non‐directive interviewing with 45 employees; and focus group discussions with 20 leaders.

Learning from a state of not‐knowing gives rise to a new problem‐solving dimension, enabling individuals to thrive and survive in complexity. Understanding constraints that seemingly truncate change is ironically a generative device that frees people from being trapped by Murphy's Law.

Change provides the stimulus for learning in complex contexts and paradigms where reciprocal relationships are sought to stabilize feedback loops and revitalize decision making. Mediating the variety of learning dynamics is an integration of two metacommunicative activities: dialogue and reflection.

Leaders are the connecting tissues to facilitating a learning that is highly interpretive and socially constructed. Process leadership is characterized by leaders assuming appropriate stewardship and walking the talk. A shared vision is necessary for contextualizing change and stabilizing learning conditions.

Combining Murphy's Law with the complexity of organizational dynamics gives rise to a new understanding of learning in unpredictable contexts. It is a learning that creates a projection of language which transcends time and space, a learning that presents itself as an intertwined activity celebrated by complex systems and processes.

Organisational survival in these volatile times is akin to the understanding of the organisation’s external environment, outsmarting its competitors and leveraging on its competitive advantage. First, the organisation needs to focus on the inward strengths, that is, the collective power of its constituents ‐ the employees ‐ to face the outward challenges. According to Chinese philosopher, Sun Tzu, the key to over coming the turbu ent external environment is to first understand the art of war: Handle your people well and you (organisation) will fight the war (competition) as one unified force.

The purpose of this paper is to explore several key issues on organizational learning and their contributions to theory, practice and policy in public‐sector management in Singapore. It also aims to determine the crucial factors and strategies in the development of organizational learning initiatives as a means of keeping competitive with the rapid changing business environment.

Four representative Singapore public organizations were chosen for this study. A total of 24 organizational learning practitioners, including senior management and human resources personnel, participated in the in‐depth interviewing.

It was found that Singapore's public sector is more concerned with the cognitive and behavioral development of individuals, rather than financial results.

Although this study is limited by the single geographical context, it offers direction for further research.

Data revealed that: The complexity between different levels of learning can be reduced by understanding specific goals unique to each level; The relationship between learning and performance goes beyond tangible expectations; Reward and recognition is a catalyst for the development of organizational learning; and Dialogue and feedback is crucial to the implementation of organizational learning initiatives.

Organizational learning in the public sector has not been comprehensively explored. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of organizational and management issues that have arisen from the recent public sector reform in Singapore. It offers a spectrum of recommendations in feasible terms for both organizational practitioners and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to (re)introduce the concept of Community of Commitment and Practice (CoCP) and to discuss the types of learning that occur in the process. It describes the differences between CoCP and the commonly‐known Community of Practice (CoP), emphasizing the power of commitment as crucial for organizational development.

A Singapore case study was used as a basis for identifying the conceptual and practical relevance of CoCP to organizational practice. A literature review based on relevant concepts provides the theoretical perspective for understanding the occurrence of learning in organizational contexts.

CoCP promotes reflective action learning and reflective action taking driven by an inside‐out approach. Intrinsic learning is largely influenced by the intent and motivation of individuals rather than a top‐down (outside‐in) approach.

The reflective inquiry and collaborative learning process of CoCP help build individuals as agents of change as they not only seek to do things differently but also influence others to make the organization a better workplace. In turn, they become reflective practitioners as they view constraints as opportunities for further learning to achieve specific outcomes.

The usefulness of CoCP is supported by relevant research and its impact on organizations is wide ranging. The paper elucidates an integrative perspective of the CoCP processes, providing a roadmap for developing the learning organization.