I have worked with senior managers and executive teams who wouldn't recognise strategy if it bit them on the proverbial; conversely, I have worked with great strategic thinkers in the most unexpected places with much less responsibility. The ability to think strategically has nothing to do with your role or seniority, although one hopes that execu...
Read MoreWe often have a strategy for this and a strategy for that - and we have strategic plans etc. Having quantized approaches to achieving goals can work well, especially when you know where you are and you well understand the nature of the system around you. However, when we are running businesses, with bigger, fuzzier and further out goals and much m...
Read MoreAnyone remember VUCA? It’s an acronym that stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. I’ve used VUCA as a strategic planning tool when trying to understand what was going on around me and so increase the chances of coming to an optimal course of action. As a concept, it was first described by the leadership guru Warren Bennis in...
Read MoreA recent UK employee study paints a rather troubling picture of company life. It found that: The study went on to identify that roughly half the people would leave a negative on-line review about their company, and that nearly 50% wouldn't even apply to a company that had negative online reviews. At a time when so many companies are struggling to...
Read MoreWe intuitively know the correlation between company culture and company success (including success in attracting and retaining great people). Research shows that companies who’s staff describe their culture as good or excellent seem to be thriving in all respects. We also know how to build an outstanding culture:
Read MoreWe often use the term 'a square peg in a round hole' to describe someone that in some way just doesn't fit either in the role, the office, or just the culture. That interpretation comes from an early 19th-century philosophical treatise* that considered people and their situations as a wide range of shapes - including triangles and oblongs, and...
Read MoreThere is undoubtedly a bit of a major transformation of the working world going on. Some say it's a "clash” between old school and new school management. Unemployment has never been lower, the number of job vacancies has never been higher, and yet there are more and more people choosing not to work – or not do paid work. And this leads to greate...
Read More- Great Uncertainty needs Exceptional Strategic Thinking - This war is creating LOTS of uncertainty, and in times of uncertainty, some good strategic thinking is the order of the day. I have written before about the effects of uncertainty (Insidious Uncertainty); we humans, and I include business owners in that, really dislike uncertainty. When fa...
Read MoreLast week, Andrew wrote about the 3 stages of growth that a company experiences. While a company needs to adjust what it does as it grows, it also needs to change what it is, and this parallel change in being is a cultural journey. Your culture is created by the people within your company. Cultures often naturally drift and evolve over time, but...
Read MoreI am a great believer in the value of a company being in touch with its values. And I am greatly saddened when I see those values distilled into a mere list of words that are written on walls and published in websites. And you know some of the words I'm talking about: Communication, Respect, Integrity and Excellence are a few of the common ones...
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