The most common model for managing risk is what's known as the Ostrich Approach. This appears to work reasonably well in many situations, and is based on 3 concepts fortuitously working together:
Read MoreHwæt! We Gar-Dena in gear-dagum, þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon! We all remember inspirational teachers - those that in some way reached deeper into our minds and sparked wonder, creativity, imagination, and fun. For me, one such teacher - from my UK equivalent of Grade 3 - would tell us a classic story of adventure...
Read MoreIt is often cited that 90% of businesses don't have any form of strategic plan, and 90% of those that do, don't actually follow it. That means that only one percent of businesses actually have some sort of strategic plan that guides the business. While these figures may be open to some debate, the general principle behind this is widely...
Read MoreIn my ongoing quest to explore coffee shops, I recently came across another of note in one of the small towns near me. From the street, it wasn't too obvious, and on closer inspection, it had an eclectic mix of tables and chairs, curious décor, and other bits of furniture placed around the edges of the room - and so looked interesting. It was...
Read MoreWhen we find ourselves operating in the 'here and now', a place to which our human nature causes us to gravitate especially when things get busy, we can end up in an ongoing reactive mode and a cycle where we are constantly putting out fires rather than preventing them. By responding to the immediate obvious issue, we don't see the bigger issue...
Read MoreConsider the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each man touches a different part of the elephant and describes it based on his limited experience. One feels the trunk and thinks it’s a snake, another touches the leg and believes it’s a tree, while another feels the side and describes it as a wall, the fourth holds its tail and thinks it's...
Read MoreAnd conversely, the power of strong, lived values A company's values are becoming an increasingly important part of a market's buying decision making - and that market is made of up thousands or millions of individual people. And, in a world where people are losing trust in governments and other traditional guiding institutions (Edelman Trust...
Read MoreIn today's rapidly evolving business landscape, complexity seems to be a persistent constant. As business owners and CEOs, the challenge is not just to navigate this complexity but to thrive within it. We humans have been running businesses for a long time (several thousand years), so you'd think we would have a good handle on how to do that....
Read MoreAs I talk to business owners, I often enquire as to what is high on their list of headache inducing issues - and the 2 that are most commonly mentioned are money and people. And it's been like that for many, many years. The specific details may change, but those 2 categories
Read MoreAnd while we can look at the legacy of human endeavour for many answers to today's questions, there is a much richer and older source of inspiration and ideas that could help us solve many of our more tactical and systemic challenges. And that is the natural world around us. Over millions or billions of years of evolution, living organisms...
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