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Blog

Category Archives: General

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Words are Easy, Numbers can be Faked, Behaviour is Difficult: The Case for Embodied Management

When I wrote Learning from the Links back in 2002 I was trying to make the case that management, like golf, was a practice and attempts to make progress in either activity should follow similar paths. I was particularly inspired … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged artificial intelligence, body, body-mind, brain, Charles Sanders Peirce, dualism, embodied management, Genghis, GOFAI, integrated reporting, John Dewey, Learning from the Links, Mark Johnson, pragmatic turn, pragmatists, Rodney Brooks, Upton Sinclair, William James | Comments Off on Words are Easy, Numbers can be Faked, Behaviour is Difficult: The Case for Embodied Management

Every Manager a “Janus”: Ambidexterity and the Ecological Perspective

I can’t believe it’s almost January again, but perhaps it could make a timely theme for a blog. The month is named after Janus, the Roman god of thresholds – beginnings and endings – who looked two ways, toward both … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Academy of Management Perspectives, ambidexterity, change, complex systems, creative leadership.strategic management, Duncan, ecocycle, ecological perspective, Janus, Jesuits, means and ends, O'Reilly, Pope Francis, Roger Martin, Roman Catholic Church, Roman god, Rothenberg, The Opposable Mind, Tushman | 1 Comment

Fire and Ice: All I want for Christmas is a Sump Pump!

It’s been a horrid two weeks week weather-wise in Southern Ontario. First we had a hard freeze, making it unusually cold for this time of the year, then we had a heavy snowstorm, which dumped about 30 cm of snow … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Christmas, ecology, fire, Holiday, ice, plumbing, pump, renewal, Southern Ontario, sump | 5 Comments

Drucker’s Intent and Why MBO Fails

Last week I blogged about mission command – auftragstaktik – a philosophy of command-and-collaboration developed by the German General Staff over a period of about eighty years, beginning in the 19th Century. Today its elements can be found in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, auftragstaktik, befehlstaktik, Descartes, detailed command, dichotomy, Drucker Forum, Efficiency Movement, existential rationalist, Frederick Taylor, German General Staff, Gestalt, Heidegger, instrumental rationality, intuition, key performance indicators, Kierkegaard, KPI, Lynda Gratton, management by objectives, MBO, mission command, Peter Drucker, philosophy, self-discipline, Soviet Union, Sputnik, tension, wicked problems | 5 Comments

Mission Command: An Elusive Philosophy Whose Time Has Come

This is the third blog in my series of reflections on the 5th Drucker Forum held in Vienna November 14-15, 2013. Among the many things that make this event so stimulating and memorable to attend is the numerous conversations that … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged auftragstaktik, befehlstaktik, boundaries, command and collaborate, complex systems, Drucker Forum, execution gap, German General Staff, mission command, mission tactics, nested hierarchy, Peter Drucker, Russian dolls, scale, The Practice of Management | 1 Comment

The Map and The Territory: Complexity as Challenge and Opportunity

My blog this week is an extended version of a comment I made a couple of days ago on Adrian Wooldridge’s (the Schumpeter columnist) report on the 5th Drucker Forum in The Economist. It also picks up from last week’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Christensen, complex systems, complexity, Drucker Forum, formulation, fractal, implementation, job-to-be-done, learning, Mandelbrot, map, Martin Wooldridge, projects, Roger Martin, scale, Schumpeter, strategy, territory, tolerance, Vienna | Comments Off on The Map and The Territory: Complexity as Challenge and Opportunity

You Can’t Herd Cats, But They Will Hunt Together

Over the weekend I got back from Vienna, where I attended the 5th Annual Peter Drucker Global Forum, the theme of which was “Managing Complexity”. Last year I attended my first of these extraordinary conferences on the strength of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged administrative practices, Cartesian cascade, complex systems, global forum, herding, herding cats, hunter-gatherer, hunting, hunting dynamics, Johan Roos, John Hagel, let it happen, make it happen, Peter Drucker, Philip Diab, project management, pull, push, stretch goals, Terry Cooke-Davies | Comments Off on You Can’t Herd Cats, But They Will Hunt Together

European Union: If You Have Them By Their Wallets, Will Their Hearts and Minds Follow?

Last Thursday I was the opening speaker at the International Forum for Future Europe held November 7- 8 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The theme of the conference was Sustainable Development and Harmonious Society and the title of my talk was “European … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged buy-in, change, Charles de Gaulle, community, complex systems, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ECSC, European community, European integration, European Union, French army, means and ends, Moebius strip, narrative, national identity, Nigel Farage, power, power trap, Thirty Year War, Tony Judt, UKIP, Vilnius | 1 Comment

Heading for London, Vilnius and Vienna

This week I am travelling to London England, which I will use as my base to attend conferences in Vilnius, Lithuania and Vienna, Austria. In Vilnius I am the opening speaker at the International Forum on the Future of Europe. … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged 40, Drucker Forum, European Union, Future Europe, Lithuania, renewal, Roger Martin, sustainability, Vienna, Vilnius | 1 Comment

Evolution is Smarter than We Are

The essence of an ecological perspective on organizations and their challenges is that one looks to nature and evolution to understand the workings of complex systems and how these problems have been solved in other contexts. From there one can … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Allan Savory, animals, change, Christensen, complex systems, ecological perspective, fire, Holism and Evolution, Innovator's Prescription, Jan Smuts, Karl Popper, landscape remediation, leukemia, Objective Knowledge, rest | 1 Comment ← Older posts Newer posts →