Review by Espen Andersen of Applied Abstractions
“David Trafford and Peter Boggis are those kinds of under-the-radar strategy consultants that ever so discreetly (and dare I say, in their inimitable British way) travel the world, advising enormous companies most civilians have never heard of about such issues as how to organise your internal departments so that they are capable of responding to technical change. (I should know, because I worked with them, first in CSC and then in the Concours Group, between 1994 and 2009.)
Now David and Peter have begot a book, Beyond Default, that provides a perspective on strategy and organisational change less built on fashionable frameworks than on solid experience. Their focus is on how organisations fail to see changes in their environment and develop strategies – real strategies – to adapt to them. The reasons are many, but most important is the fact that organisations have developed processes and measures to do what they currently do, and the focus on those particulars does not permit stepping back and seeing the bigger picture. Instead, companies carry on towards a “default” future – and, crucially, that future may be declining. Companies need to know what they don’t know and what they do not have the capabilities to do – and to acquire those capabilities when necessary. To do that, the authors advocate experiential learning – seeing for yourself what the future looks like by seeking it out, preferably as a group of managers from the same organisation experiencing and reflecting together.”