by Florin Lungu | Apr 17, 2026 | The Flabby Middle
When I was working in engine development at Renault, I watched five teams ruin a perfectly good engine. Each team had a legitimate goal. The performance team wanted maximum acceleration. The emissions team needed to limit that acceleration to meet pollution standards....
by Florin Lungu | Apr 16, 2026 | The Flabby Middle
My first week at Volvo, nobody told me what to do. I don’t mean they forgot. I mean the onboarding was: “Just follow this guy, Lars, and do what he does.” That was it. No brief. No structure. No explanation of what the role actually required. Lars...
by Florin Lungu | Mar 30, 2026 | The Flabby Middle
I’ve been coaching leaders in Sweden and Denmark for over a decade. In that time I’ve sat in hundreds of rooms where executives described what was broken in their organization. And then I’ve sat with the middle managers who were expected to fix it....
by Florin Lungu | Nov 27, 2025 | The Flabby Middle
A few weeks ago, I joined the People People Meetup in Copenhagen. The topic on the agenda was ownership. A simple word, but one that carries a lot of weight in leadership. As I listened to the conversation, a quiet thought kept forming in my mind. We keep asking...
by Florin Lungu | Jun 30, 2025 | Employee Engagement, Team Dynamics & Culture, The Flabby Middle
Imagine this. You walk into the office. Everyone is at their desks. The KPIs are green. Nobody complains. But something feels… flat. There’s no spark. No urgency. No hunger. People aren’t checked out. They’re just not fully checked in. Welcome to what I call “the...
by Florin Lungu | May 25, 2025 | Employee Engagement, Leadership, The Flabby Middle, Trust
He didn’t want praise. He wanted to know it mattered. That’s what stuck with me after a conversation with a frustrated project lead. He’d led a cross-functional team through a brutal sprint. Late nights. High stakes. Solid delivery. The recognition? A generic “thanks...
