If the leadership team of an organisation calls in a management consultant it’s reasonable to assume that they want to achieve some form of change. The expectation is that the consultant would offer impartial advice, and apply their knowledge and expertise to assist the leadership team in achieving their goals. If only it was that simple. Read the full article.
Is your approach to strategy to apply one big idea that you’ve been developing for some time, or do you consider many ideas – or a combination of ideas – that you think may be relevant? If you’re the former, according to Isiah Berlin – the British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas – you’re a hedgehog. …
The words strategy and plan are often used interchangeably. People talk about their ‘plan’ or ‘strategy’ as if they were the same thing and some, in an attempt to make their plan more important, call it a ‘strategic plan’. The reality is that a plan and strategy have very different meanings: they are based upon different decision criteria and contain …
The aim of the Beyond Default Roundtable discussions is to give experienced practitioners in strategy and change an opportunity to share their experiences, challenge conventional wisdom, brainstorm ideas and network with peers who have the same interests and challenges. In May 2021 a small group of invited executives and consultants met virtually to discuss the impact of exogenous forces on …
In early 2020 the context of the majority of the world’s population, and millions of businesses across the globe, changed. The exogenous force that caused this significant context shift was, of course, COVID-19. It was a context shift that no one foresaw, nobody wanted and no one was prepared for. While governments struggled to respond and health services became overstretched, …
For many years we have known that the brain is a great pattern maker. In fact, the only way for it to process all the data it receives is to drop information into pre-prepared pathways or patterns. It needs a ‘default’ method for processing information to cope. Our best guess is that the brain handles around 11 million bits of …
In this podcast New Work Revolution’s Brandon Allen interviews David Trafford about the challenges facing leaders today. The conversation focuses on David’s view that the traditional model of leadership, which is based upon the individual leader, is no longer relevant in today’s increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, and that today’s challenges and opportunities require greater collective leadership. …
When we’re asked the question “why are some organisations better at strategy and change than others”, without hesitation we always answer “because they have greater collective leadership”. It’s simply because we’ve seen this type of leadership in organisations that are more successful at strategy and change, than in those that aren’t. We’re then often asked “which organisations are these?”. The …
Much has been written about strategy, and no doubt more will be written in the future. However, the many thousands of articles, academic papers and books that have been written on the subject have done little to increase the chances of organisations finding the key to sustained success, particularly in today’s increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. While …
The purpose of strategy execution is to turn strategic intent into operational reality. It’s the series of decisions and actions aimed at changing an organisation’s trajectory, from one taking it to its default future to one that takes it to an improved future. These decisions and actions are usually undertaken within some form of transformation programme. However, all the evidence …
