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 …
Seven Common Strategy Traps – And How To Avoid Them
Developing and executing effective strategy is never easy, especially in today’s increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. It’s something all organisations do, but some do it better than others. Developing and executing good strategy is important as it ultimately determines the fate of your organisation. But why are some organisations better at it than others? One reason is …
Has COVID-19 killed strategy?
In the Foreword to our book Beyond Default – Setting Your Organization On A Trajectory To An Improved Future Don Tapscott says that ‘over the last few decades strategy has been in and out of fashion – for many businesses that followed the trends, mainly out’. He then goes on to say that ‘a number of factors are conspiring today …
Mediaspace: interview with David Trafford
In this short Mediaspace video interview, David Trafford shares his thoughts on the challenges COVID-19 has brought in respect to developing strategy and delivering change. He also offers three pieces of advice to professionals in the media space who are navigating their way through these challenging times. Watch the full interview.
The Case for Greater Collective Leadership
The last chapter of our book Beyond Default – Setting Your Organization On A Trajectory To An Improved Future is called It All Starts With Collective Leadership. The reason for this is that without collective leadership an organisation has very little chance of having a collective strategy, and without a collective strategy it has very little chance of successfully changing …
Are you Practising Collective Leadership?
Collective leadership is a style of leadership where multiple individuals exercise their leadership roles within a group – and then the entire group provides leadership to the wider organisation. It’s a fluid and flexible approach to leadership, where roles and resultant accountabilities evolve in response to changing circumstances. As a result, the power of a leadership team practising collective leadership …
Operating Principles for Collective Leadership
If you believe your organisation would benefit from greater collective leadership then how can it be established? One of the most effective ways is to introduce a set of operating principles, where an operating principle is a conscious choice about how an organisation has decided to operate. It’s a conscious choice between two, or more, equally valid alternatives. In the …
Ignore Exogenous Forces At Your Peril
The influence of exogenous forces can rapidly change the context within which organisations operate, and the future they can bring. The recent COVID-19 Coronavirus is an example of one such exogenous force. A force that in recent months has dramatically changed the context of millions of people and thousands of organisations across the globe. What’s more, the impact of COVID-19 …
The Importance of Strategic Leadership in Times of Uncertainty
Without question we are living in a period of great uncertainty. It’s often said, but is no less true, that the context within which organisations operate today is changing at an unprecedented rate. For many leaders this is a challenging time, particularly for those whose careers have progressed during years of relative stability. The one thing we do know is …
Context Is Everything When It Comes To Strategy
Strategy is one of those words that is often overused and frequently misused. What do we really mean by strategy and what is its real purpose? In our book Beyond Default my co-author and I argue that the real purpose of strategy, particularly corporate strategy, is to change the trajectory of an organisation, from one leading it to its ‘default …