Tag Archives: ecology

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Is Storytelling a Strategy or a Competency?

Several weeks ago a blog appeared on the Harvard Business Review site entitled “Good Companies are Storytellers. Great Companies Are Storydoers.” In it its author, Ty Montague, outlined the characteristics of a storydoing company: 1. They have a story 2. … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged competency, Cynthia Kurtz, deliberate practice, ecology, engineering, feedback, narrative, principles, story, story being, story doing, storytelling, strategy, Ty Montague | Comments Off on Is Storytelling a Strategy or a Competency?

Clayton Christensen at Davos: An Ecological Perspective on Innovation

When interviewed at the 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos, Clayton Christensen discussed what he has called “The Capitalist Dilemma”. It goes like this: There are basically three kinds of innovation in the economy: empowering, sustaining and efficiency. Empowering (or … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Uncategorized | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, capital, capitalist dilemma, Carlota Perez, change, Clayton Christensen, community, complex systems, context, Davos, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecology, ecosystem, efficiency, empowering, innovation, interest rates, IRR, machine metaphor, organic metaphor, ROCE, RONA, social traps, sustainability, sustaining, sweet zone, The New Ecology of Leadership, Tyler Cowen, unemployment | 3 Comments

Shareholder Value Part III: A New Narrative for Capitalism

The ripples from Joe Nocera’s August 10 column in The New York Times, “Down With Shareholder Value” continue to radiate throughout the blogosphere. This past week I came across Miguel Padró’s Yahoo blog, “Is ‘Maximizing Shareholder Value’ No Longer the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Alexis de Toqueville, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Aspen Institute, Berle and Means, community capitalism, context, crisis, destruction, ecodynamics, ecological perspective, ecology, English Nonconformists, evolution, externalities, family business, Gerald Davis, hunter-gatherer, Joe Nocera, John Kenneth Galbraith, managerial capitalism, MiguelPadro, narrative, narrative centre of gravity, neoclassical economics, re-localize, renewal, retention, selection, shareholder capitalism, shareholder value model, Sisyphus, The New Industrial State, variation | 1 Comment

From Machines to Plants: Wandering in The Gardens of Democracy

In The New Ecology of Leadership I draw an extended, disciplined analogy between the cycle of an ecosystem (my favourite is a fire-dependent, lodge-pole pine forest) and the trajectories that organizations follow as they go through their lives. The objective … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged complex systems, destruction, ecological perspective, ecology, economics, Eric Liu, Gardenbrain, Gardens of Democracy, government, hedge-funds, Machinebrain, means and ends, Nick Hanauer, politics, Second Enlightenment, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on From Machines to Plants: Wandering in The Gardens of Democracy

Shareholder Value – Part II: “Down with Shareholder Value”

In Saturday’s New York Times, Joe Nocera wrote a column entitled “Down With Shareholder Value”. In it he traced briefly the rise of the concept and then suggested that we are at the “dawn of a new movement”, although it … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, creation, destruction, ecology, fire, forest, Harvard Business Review, Jay Lorsch, Joe Nocera, Justin Fox, lodgepole pine, Neil Sheehan, New York Times, shareholder value model, Vietnam War, World War II | Comments Off on Shareholder Value – Part II: “Down with Shareholder Value”

Why Walmart is Like a Forest: Excerpt from The New Ecology of Leadership published in Strategy+Business

An excerpt from The New Ecology of Leadership has just been published in Strategy+Business.  It draws the parallels between the growth of the Walmart stores and forest succession, suggesting that it is fundamentally an ecological process. You can read the excerpt here.

Posted in Change, General | Tagged bribery, context, ecology, forest succession, stores, The New Ecology of Leadership, Walmart | Comments Off on Why Walmart is Like a Forest: Excerpt from The New Ecology of Leadership published in Strategy+Business

Scribblings from the Garret

Welcome to my blog, the launching of my new website, and the pre-launch publicity for my forthcoming book, The New Ecology of Leadership: Business Mastery in a Chaotic World. In his January/February article in Foreign Affairs, The Future of History: … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, ecology, fractal, Francis Fukuyama, Great Stagnation, Homer Simpson, leadership, middle class, Mr. Spock, narrative of the future, political science, principles, social science | Comments Off on Scribblings from the Garret Newer posts →