When a few years ago I was at an international conference of about 150 public health professionals, one of the…
Followership
We live in the age obsessed with leadership. Everyone (clearly it’s in an overgeneralisation, but you get my point) wants…
How We Find Life in Death
“Death is very likely the single best invention of life.” – Steve Jobs Ever since the news of the coronavirus emerged, we…
Emergent strategy
Mintzberg famously coined an expression ‘emergent strategy’ to make a point that strategy was not all made up of what…
On (organisational) bullshit
Reading Frankfurt’s On Bullshit triggered a barrage of memories and thoughts for me. To paraphrase Frankfurt, bullshit is so pervasive…
Strategy as five Cs
The view of strategy as an intended plan is prevalent. But what drives us to develop strategies? It seems to…
Being curios, creative and critical
The three antidotes to a life of thoughtlessness seem to be being curious, creative and thinking critically. Yet much of what…
Strategy as control
Developing strategies sometimes has an interesting quality of not really being about developing a clarity of action as action of…
Strategy as 5As
One of my favourite board games is Azul. It is simple enough that a 7 year old can play and…
Non-adaptive adaptive practice
It is striking how our rhetoric and reality – or aspirational and actual – can be so different. I was…
Evidence based
Evidence based practice and policy sounds very cool. It instills a sense of… what’s the word? When you feel something…
Enlightenment and strategy
In human history, people always planned, plotted and developed ploys to survive, win and take advantage of their opponents or…
Certainty of uncertainty
It’s interesting to look back at things I was learning in my MBA and consider its relevance to the world…
Slowing down, gaining more
One of my first impressions of life in the UK during my very first visit was that it was fast-paced.…
Values and virtues
Whilst I was a Henley Business School we talked a lot about values in workshops and in coaching sessions I…
Revolution
These days everyone seems to be in the business of revolutionising businesses. One marketing statement after another claim to revolutionise…
Failing to fail
What is my understanding of failure? Perhaps not much different to a common view held by many people. Yet I…
Master and manager
What does it mean to line manage someone? Is it to control and manipulate or develop and enable people you…
Diminishing benefits
Over the years my son accumulated dozens of Lego packs that let him construct different things (cars, planes, boats, etc).…
Strategy and luck
I like strategy board games. Part of what I enjoy about them is working out how they work and how…