Tag Archives: context

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The Buzz of Entrepreneurs: Hunting Dynamics Part II

Last week I blogged about the virtues of organizations with “hunting dynamics” – networks that could spread themselves out across an opportunity space to explore for opportunities that come and go in unpredictable ways. Once a resource is discovered, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged change, community, complex systems, consensus, context, creativity, democracy, ecological perspective, ecosystem, Edison, entrepreneur, fission-fusion, forager, honeybees, hunting dynamics, innovation, leadership, passion, quorum, slime mould, story, The New Ecology of Leadership, Thomas Seeley | 1 Comment

Hunting Dynamics: Why Chance Encounters Should Not Be Left to Chance

A few days ago Knowledge@ Wharton published an article entitled, “How Seemingly Irrelevant Ideas Lead to Breakthrough Innovation”. It cited several examples. The cushioning on Reebok’s basketball shoes was derived from intravenous fluid bags; Qualcomm’s new colour display technology is … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abduction, affordance, change, context, ecological perspective, exploit, explore, fission-fusion, hunter-gatherer, hunting dynamics, improvisation, innovation, narrative, Peirce, Quakers, serendipity, Wharton | 1 Comment

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

False Wizards: Why I Don’t Believe in Management Gurus

The late historian, Daniel Boorstin, once said, “Trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.” That is, planners and managers (politicians too) should not try to replicate desirable organizational … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged abstraction, Amazon, Apple, both...and, cause-and-effect, change, Cisco, complex systems, context, Costco, cut flowers, Daniel Boorstin, democracy, ecocycle, ecological perspective, either/or, Fast Company, Fritz Roethlisberger, Juniper, management gurus, management principles, MBA, Microsoft, Middle East, paradigm, Polly La Barre, power, Salesforce, sweet zone, The New Ecology of Leadership, trust, verbal wands, Whole Foods, Zara | 3 Comments

“Horses for Courses”: Changing the Guard at Citibank

This week Vikram S. Pandit resigned suddenly as CEO of Citibank, together with his longtime lieutenant and business partner, John Havens, who was President and COO. Although Pandit claimed that he left voluntarily, it is clear that he and Havens … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged CEO succession, change, Citigroup, context, culture, ecocycle, John Havens, Michael Corbat, Michael O'Neill, Robert Rubin, social traps, sweet zone, Vikram Pandit | Comments Off on “Horses for Courses”: Changing the Guard at Citibank

Romney and Obama: Do Mormons Make Better Managers than Leaders?

We are into the last six weeks of the presidential election and the contrasts between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama throw light on the sometimes-controversial distinction between managers and leaders. In his 1977 article in the Harvard Business Review “Managers … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged Barack Obama, Clayton Christensen, context, David Brooks, Democratic National Convention, George W. Bush, leaders, manager, means and ends, Mitt Romney, Mormon, narrative, pull, push, strategy, Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, Zaleznik | 1 Comment

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

Recipe for Ruin: Nothing Lasts Unless It Is Incessantly Renewed

Over the weekend a comment on a management blog referred to a piece by management writer Steve Denning in Forbes magazine. Entitled “The Key Missing Ingredient in Leadership Today”, it argued that real leadership is all about transforming systems, not … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Apocalypse Now, bureaucracy, coercive bureaucracy, complex systems, context, creativity, crisis, Denning, Deresiewicz, destruction, discipline, ecological perspective, enabling bureaucracy, Forbes, Francis Ford Coppola, freedom, Heart of Darkness, hierarchy, identity, innovation, Joseph Conrad, know-how, know-what, means and ends, modular, narrative, power, renewal, ruin, Toyota Production System, West Point | Comments Off on Recipe for Ruin: Nothing Lasts Unless It Is Incessantly Renewed

Tattoos That Fit: Barclays, LIBOR, Culture and Regulation

The questioning of Barclays Bank’s Bob Diamond by the U.K. Parliamentary Committee on the LIBOR rate fixing scandal a couple of weeks ago was riveting. The unflappable Diamond deflected the MPs queries with a practised ease despite mounting evidence of … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, banking, Barclays, Bob Diamond, community, complex systems, context, culture, ecological process, gift economy, integrity, LIBOR, management ethics, Quakers, rate-fixing, regulation, Society of Friends, values | Comments Off on Tattoos That Fit: Barclays, LIBOR, Culture and Regulation

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 ← Older posts Newer posts →