John Boyd was a US Air Force pilot, later assigned to the training US Air Force pilots, where he became known as ’40-second Boyd’ because of a standing bet that he could beat anyone in an aerial dogfight within 40 seconds, starting from a position of disadvantage. He was also one of the top military
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous – or apocryphal – quote from management consultant and author Peter Drucker. He may or may not have used those exact words but he certainly believed that an intended strategy could be overwhelmed by the culture of all levels of staff in the organisation, such that the
Let’s look at some of the main aspects of thinking about strategy in terms of key strategic relationships, and the practical applications of those. Focus on the relationships Every organisation sits in a web of strategic couplings. In thinking differently, we don’t look at individual organisations (the competitor, the partner, and so on) but shift
There are many approaches to strategy development and strategic planning. In ‘Strategy Safari’, Mintzberg characterises 10 different schools of strategy, the source for each school, and the discipline on which they are based. What’s fascinating is how many of these have their roots in the very stable economic period of the 1950s or 60s, with
Most strategy approaches don’t really take time into account. It shows up sometimes as a window of opportunity, or the time horizon within which a risk could turn into an issue. And time is important in the strategy execution plan. But time as a strategic variable isn’t really handled in strategy development. But in the
Talk to many HR Directors, and organisation development appears to be synonymous with leadership development. This is the traditional approach, it’s person-centric and the premise is that working directly with the leader or leaders of an organisation has sufficient impact that the downwards cascade of change can initiate and sustain changes in lower levels of
This post will lay out why change rate is so important for strategy, so let’s start out by defining what we mean by that. We define change rate as the amount of change you can carry out in a given time period – usually a window of opportunity or risk. The change can be done
It can be hard, being a manager, balancing the needs of today with the possibilities and risks of tomorrow. Things can be stable for a while – but often not for long. And if it’s hard managing within a single legal entity, how much harder is it for managers to collaborate across a system which
Taylor’s one best way It’s just over a hundred years since the death of Frederick Winslow Taylor. He came from humble beginnings, serving an apprenticeship at a steelworks, and was rapidly promoted through a number of jobs and levels. As he rose in seniority, he became increasingly interested in how much work could be expected
I see an increasing number of references to, and sales pitches for, “systemic coaching” and in this short article, I’d like to reflect on what a coaching approach would need to be like to justify the claim to being “systemic”. Before starting on that, though, a couple of qualifiers. First, I’m writing here as a
This is the second part of an article which was initially published in PM World Journal (PMWJ) in November 2016. PMWJ is a non-refereed online publication devoted to knowledge creation and sharing, and continuous learning in the field of modern program and project management. Patterns of Strategy: defining how strategy performance will be assessed It’s
This is the first part of an article which was initially published in PM World Journal (PMWJ) in November 2016. PMWJ is a non-refereed online publication devoted to knowledge creation and sharing, and continuous learning in the field of modern program and project management. Bridging the gap Overview There is fairly consistent survey evidence that
Guest blog by Prof Darren Dalcher, Director, National Centre for Project Management, University of Hertfordshire, UK First published in PM World Journal Vol. V, Issue XI – November 2016 www.pmworldjournal.net © 2016 Darren Dalcher Humans have long been fascinated with patterns in nature and in socially constructed work and cultural environments. Consequently, the abilities to identify
Generally, if you ask a manager what they manage, they will tell you that they manage people and budget. Similarly, if you talk to many HR directors, management development appears to be synonymous with people development, working with the manager to build their self-awareness and self-management, and assisting them to do the same with their
Even when people don’t actually use the mantra of TINA – “there is no alternative” – in strategic decision making, very often it permeates the thinking of management teams. Something has happened out there in your strategic environment, some competitor has stolen a march on you, or some new innovation has come along and it’s
There’s a lot written about strategic fit, about being agile and change-hungry, ready to create or seize market opportunities. But there’s a whole class of strategies about doing the opposite of that, being slow, holding onto what is. The Long Tail refers to the large numbers of products with low sales volumes (compared to the
The concept of a gene is familiar, a biological element transferred from parent to child, and which affects the child’s characteristics. Despite this, there’s a longstanding debate about how much of behaviour is shaped by nature, that genetic inheritance, and how much by nurture, the upbringing and experience of the child. Looking back through family
A remora is a fish which holds onto a larger marine host using a sucker, and benefiting from protection and dropped food from the host. And the Remora strategy is one often used by suppliers, linking very tightly to their customers and being very responsive to their needs. Linking to a fast-growing customer is a
Delivering strategic transformation can be hard, and one factor which makes it difficult is having the resource to pull it off, in a time frame which is useful. A lot of organisations describe themselves as resource-constrained, in both the public and private sector. There’s a couple of reasons for this. Perhaps the main reason for
Looking at the papers recently, there were several examples of regulators in different sectors flexing their muscles. The EU Competition Commissioner blocked the planned merger of telecoms giants O2 and Three. In their view, this would have reduced the number of operators to a level where competition could be undermined, driving up costs for consumers
Risk management is important for any company of any size and, broadly, risk can be categorised into two main types, depending on what would happen if the risk turns into an issue. Thinking about risk impact in terms of a ship, some risks are operational, in that the emerging issue would damage the ship’s superstructure. Challenging,
“There is one fundamental insight underlying all management science. It is that the business enterprise is a system of the highest order: a system whose parts are human beings contributing voluntarily of their knowledge, skill and dedication to a joint venture. And one thing characterizes all genuine systems, whether they be mechanical like the control
There’s an English proverb: An Englishman’s home is his castle. And what it means is this: that his home is a place where he can do as he pleases, and exclude anyone he pleases. And across the world, humankind have built castles, literal and metaphoric, ever since we figured out how to make them stay
A couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article about incoming CEOs of private sector organisations, and how the market really likes it when they communicate the strategy they are adopting for their organisation, as reflected by an uplift in the share price. The underlying premise was that this shows the CEO in a
In a previous blog, we looked at 2 out of 5 systems laws, and applied them to the financial crash. In this post, we look at 3 further laws, and what they tell us about the nature and causes of the crash. Redundancy of Potential Command Principle: In any complex decision network, the potential to
In 2008, Her Majesty the Queen asked academics at LSE why nobody had seen the financial crash coming. It was four years before she got anything resembling an answer from an economist and then the answer seemed to boil down to observing that everyone seemed to think it was someone else’s job to look out
David Bowie. Musician, innovator and, style icon, he died on 10 January 2016 after 5 decades in the creative arts. Since then, there have been many, many profiles, tributes and obituaries, looking at his development as an artist and his huge and varied body of work, citing his influence on music and on style more generally.
Imagine the intelligence arm of a national government, with all its reach, secrecy and resources, throwing a competition open to Joe and Jane Public, with no domain-specific knowledge, and asking them to forecast answers to geopolitical and economic trends. Imagine individuals and teams competing to see who could get the most accurate prediction on the
We do a lot of work on designing organisations. Organisation structure has a massive impact on how well organisations perform: how well they can fulfil their purpose, how well they can set and execute strategy, and how efficient they are. We also tend to look at the information in the organisation. Part of this is
The Greek architekton and the Latin architectus both literally mean masterbuilder, a person responsible for the design and construction of the built environment. We tend to think of Master Builders as those men who oversaw construction of cathedrals, and usually they came to their Master Builder profession from one of the trades, and the role
Recently we were working with a large engineering firm. And one of the really striking things about them was their distinctive ability to look outside their organisation and into the future, and identify potential new technologies and ways of working which could improve their operations. We were particularly struck by the range and sheer number
200 years ago this week was the battle of Waterloo which saw Wellington defeat Napoleon and left him as the foremost soldier of his day. One of Wellington’s best known quotations was: “All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by
Recently, I was on the 14th floor of the Shell building in London. It is right next to the Thames, overlooking the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye, with the familiar shapes of the Gherkin and BT tower in the middle distance, with the rest of London fading into the haze. Pretty apt, then,
When we talk to managers about organisation design, we are, initially at least, talking about the operating structure and the management structure. The operating structure shows the way in which the work of the organisation is actually organised, and the management structure covers the additional elements which sit alongside that, to bind it all into
If one major thing goes wrong, most reasonably healthy organisations – and most people – can manage. If two go wrong at the same time, most will still cope. When three go wrong together, typically that’s more than most can cope with and we have the conditions for a crisis. You have to wonder, then,
Before I was a consultant, I had a “proper job”. This involved persuading recalcitrant pieces of steel to be a different size and shape to the one they naturally wanted to be and often this was in the production of architectural steelwork to match the designs of architects. These were “real architects” designing real buildings.
Austrian Franz Klammer was arguably the best downhill skier the world has ever seen. He dominated the event for four seasons between 1975 and 1978, winning the Hahnenkamm (regarded as the most demanding course on the World Cup circuit) four times. He won 25 World Cup downhill races, including 12 in a row. He took
“Crisis? What crisis?” “So what are the synergies you’re after?” He looked back at us blankly – this was one of those tumbleweed moments – we’d asked a question to which there was no answer. We were there to help the M&A “manager” for a global player who had just acquired a company for a
