Ideas, arguments and Uncomfortable Questions.
Writing about strategy, judgement, leadership and the strange things intelligent organisations do when reality becomes inconvenient.
Some pieces begin with a company in the news. Others with something I have seen inside an organisation, a pattern that keeps repeating, or an assumption that deserves a harder look.
Most organisational problems become more interesting when you ask one more question.
The articles are less interested in repeating management orthodoxy than in examining the assumptions underneath it.
Follow the questions.
Writing about the assumptions, structures and behaviours that shape whether organisations remain in contact with reality - and what leaders can do when the old answers stop working.
When Intelligent People Create Unintelligent Institutions
Why the next frontier of management is institutional judgement.
Written by Martin Shelford for the Global Peter Drucker Forum. Why intelligent people and good information are not enough - and why the modern management challenge is building institutions capable of turning distributed observation and disagreement into coherent judgement and coordinated action.
Read Martin's article on the Drucker ForumThe most dangerous assumptions are the ones we no longer realise we're making.
Why the assumptions most capable of distorting organisational judgement are often the ones that have stopped feeling like assumptions at all.
Read articleWhat is a 'fluid' business?
Why organisational safety increasingly comes from responsiveness rather than weight, rigidity and the ability to defend a fixed plan.
Read articleStop reaching for strategy. It's clarity you're after.
Why another strategy process often fails to solve the underlying problem, and why clarity demands harder choices than a longer plan.
Read articleThe Cost of Overcomplication.
How reasonable decisions accumulate into organisational drag, and why complexity ultimately becomes the latency between reality changing and the organisation being able to respond.
Read article