Dr Mike Carter
Chief Scientific Officer
LinkedInMike Carter is the Chief Scientific Officer at Tensense and has extensive experience at senior leadership level in the private and public sectors. He is a specialist in the leadership of organisational change and holds a doctorate from the University of Bath.
For 10 years he was the Managing Director of Stratagem Consulting, for 5 years the CEO of Global Intelligence Group Solutions and is a former Director of Executive Development at the University of Exeter Business School.
Mike has consulted in most developed countries of the world for organisations that have included: ING Bank, The Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the NHS, EMI Music, Universal Music & Gillette. For three years, he led a project with Apple Corps (The Beatles) and Cirque du Soleil in London, Montreal and Las Vegas assisting these creative companies to develop The Beatles Love Show – now the most successful show in Las Vegas.
Mike has conducted research in the area of Organisational Sensemaking™ since 1988 and was appointed a Fellow of the University of Bath in 2005 and the University of Exeter in 2008. He has taught on numerous MBA, MSc and executive development programmes in the areas of leadership and organisational change in the UK, US, Malaysia and Greece. Mike co-authored the winning 2014 international research paper of the year in Human Relations and between 2014– 2016 he led a UK government grant aided research project with the University of Bath, the findings of which helped him create Tensense’s diagnostic tool.
The challenge for reform in policing
In an article in The Times, Sir Mark Rowley was attributed with saying that he needed to [effectively] take a head-on approach to the reform and organisational change of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). No mean feat, given the size of the organisation (c. 45,000 people) and the scope; everything from dealing with long-term sickness, […]
“Houston, we have a problem”
On 13 April 1970 astronaut Commander Jim Lovell made one of the great understatements of the last century – “Houston, we have a problem”
The Case for Sensemaking Audits
Creating the right organisational culture and psychological safety necessary to give voice to quiet, diffident and dissenting colleagues is a laudable ambition.
Unfolding events are seldom grounded in logic
In a recent Sunday Times article, Matthew Syed attempts to put into perspective the recent purging excoriation of conduct by politicians and officials during the pandemic: ‘The WhatsApp witch-hunt chisels away at our sense of fair play’. His central thesis being one that will chime, not only with politicians, but all leaders who face a […]
A new and unique alternative to the ‘discovery’ phase employed by consulting practices
This paper has not been written as an attack on [organisational] consulting practices, but it does make a strong case to suggest that some activities such as the cliché of ’30 graduates crawling over a company with their clipboards’ is now so ‘analogue’ as to be in the throes of redundancy. On a positive note […]
Why we remain committed and excited about the opportunities of Organisational Sensemaking TM
Timing, timing, timing! There has never been a better time to challenge the staid, outdated and outmoded forms of information gathering and dissemination in organisations, for which we offer a genuinely unique solution, based upon mimicking the science of sensemaking in the construction of our Organisational Sensemaking TM diagnostic. Throughout the world organisations have received […]
Sensemaking: enabling leaders to see into the future
‘Given that the commercial environment is awash with risk and uncertainty, few leaders will want to trust important resourcing and investment decisions to gut instinct. Indeed, risk management may be the top priority in times of crisis, but what if business leaders could avoid the crisis in the first place?’ The contention in this piece is […]
England’s Manager Gareth Southgate stands on the brink of …… in the football World Cup (fill in the blank if you dare, – or care!)
Gareth Southgate embodies many of the qualities and characteristics that we would hope to find in contemporary leadership: setting stretch targets, providing support for his players and staff, an emphasis on great communication; and a healthy dose of humility and vulnerability. “As footballers we’re going to lose matches, we’re going to concede goals, but how […]
Ambiguity is the enemy of execution
Life is lived forward but has to be understood backwards. That is to say, understanding follows action – and this is the conundrum for leaders who need an increasingly rapid understanding of ‘what’s the story here?’ (hindsight) in order to improvise plausible foresight. Using foresight rather than hindsight means leaders need to use all the […]