Tag Archives: narrative

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Can Rome be Renewed? It Will Take a Miracle…

Is there such a thing as a disruptive religion? Two thousand years ago Christianity certainly qualified as such. It disrupted the then-ruling establishment, making a clear distinction between those things that belonged to God and those that belonged to Caesar. … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged cardinal, change, community, conclave, crisis, destruction, ecological perspective, Hans Kung, hunting dynamics, leadership, means and ends, mission, mountain, narrative, Pope, Promised Land, Roman Catholic Church, Rome, The New Ecology of Leadership, trust, wilderness | Comments Off on Can Rome be Renewed? It Will Take a Miracle…

Innovation at Yahoo – Where Is the Gemba?

This past week the management news was headlined by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to ban the firm’s staff from working remotely.  Annoyed Yahoo employees quickly leaked the clumsily worded memo from the head of HR. It read in part: … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged change, Clayton Christensen, community, ecosystem, fission-fusion, gatekeepers, gemba, Google, Gore, herder, hunter, hunter-gatherer, hunting dynamics, innovation, leadership, Marissa Mayer, narrative, Yahoo | 2 Comments

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

The Presidential Election: America In a Trap

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley and it is difficult to imagine how disruptive Superstorm Sandy must have been to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. He was effectively prevented from campaigning and forced to watch his … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged 1984, Barack Obama, Big Brother, change, china, Chris Christy, Chrysler, community, dependency corruption, ecocycle, ecological perspective, George Orwell, Great Recession, Jeep, Jeremiah Wright, John McCain, Lawrence Lessig, leadership, management, Mitt Romney, Mormon, narrative, Ohio, power, regulation, social trap, special interests, Superstorm Sandy, sweet zone, tax code, winner-take-all | 1 Comment

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

The “Comeback Kid” Comes Through and the Perils of Improv

Last week I wrote about Clint Eastwood’s unintended highlight speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) and this week my topic is the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Clint Eastwood has since revealed what he was thinking when he gave his … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Leadership | Tagged anthropology, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton speech, Charles Krauthammer, Clint Eastwood speech, Comeback Kid, community, Democratice National Convention, hunter-gatherer, improv, improvisation, Lorna Marshall, Michelle Obama speech, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, more perfect union, narrative, religious revival, Republican National Convention, William James, Wittgenstein | 4 Comments

“Go Ahead: Make Our Day” – What Clint Eastwood Might Have Said

The unintended highlight of the Republican National Convention (RNC) last week was Clint Eastwood’s rambling address on Thursday that consumed 13 minutes of precious prime time, delaying Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech. Scheduled for only five minutes in the rigidly scripted … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, apathy, Barack Obama, challenge, change, chaos, Clint Eastwood, communities of capitalists, community, cowboy, Democratic National Convention, despair, entertainment, government service, gunslinger, heart, hope, how, identity, individual, meaning, mission, Mitt Romney, narrative, narrative centre of gravity, network, obstacles, passion, political parties, purpose, Republican National Convention, stories, support, tension, trade-off, unemployed, values, what, who, why | 2 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

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

Measuring Buzz: Hunting Dynamics in the 21st Century

Every manager knows that the “buzz” on a team is an important indicator of their likely success. You can poke your head into a meeting room and, without hearing a word of what is being said, get an instant impression … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged body language, buzz, communication media, engagement, exploration, fission-fusion, hunter-gatherer, hunters and herders, hunting dynamics, narrative | Comments Off on Measuring Buzz: Hunting Dynamics in the 21st Century ← Older posts Newer posts →