Tag Archives: scale

Wells Fargo: Culture Eats Strategy (again) and (this time) the CEO

Over the decades organizational culture has devoured hundreds, if not thousands of strategies. One of the most recent examples is the case of Wells Fargo, where culture not only ate a long-standing, apparently successful strategy but last week also consumed … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged acquisitions, banking, Carrie Tolstedt, Cartesian mindset, cross-selling, culture, ethical code, ethics, Goldman Sachs, Jack Welch, John Stumpf, mega-bank, mergers, muppets, Norwest Corporation, outcomes, performance, process, scale, strategy, Timothy Sloan, Wachovia, wells fargo | Comments Off on Wells Fargo: Culture Eats Strategy (again) and (this time) the CEO

For Innovation – Think Small – Like a Mindful Mollusk!

The story of Inky the octopus made headlines around the world this past week. In case you have been in Outer Mongolia (without the internet) Inky was a male common octopus on exhibit in New Zealand’s National Aquarium on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged 914, Arkansas, Arthur D. Little, Ben Franklin, change, ecology, IBM, Inky, innovation, mindfulness, mollusk, National Aquarium, New Zealand, octopus, Sam Walton, scale, Sear Roebuck, Walmart, Xerox | Comments Off on For Innovation – Think Small – Like a Mindful Mollusk!

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

New Beginnings: Stories of Resilience and Renewal

It’s spring in the Northern Hemisphere, or at least the calendar says it ought to be. But it has been cold and grey with a gusty wind here in Southern Ontario as we wobble our way back to the sun. … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged beginnings, cardinal, centre of gravity, change, Christian, crucifixion, destruction, Easter, ecological perspective, Egypt, festival, fractal, Garden of Eden, Good Friday, Haggadah, Hollywood, Horatio Alger, Jew, Passover, Pope, religion, scale, spring, strong families, The New Ecology of Leadership, unifying narrative | 2 Comments

False Wizards Part II: A Plague of Paradigms

The English economist John Kay contends that the word “paradigm” is “the most overworked and abused term in the study of management.” I agree with him completely and must confess that I cringe every time I see the latest management … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Cadbury, change, community, complex systems, Costco, crisis, customer, employee, Forbes, Fry, goals, John Mackey, life cycle, Mary Parker Follett, Nonconformists, paradigm, power, principles, Quakers, reason, Robert E. Wood, Rowntree, scale, Sears, shareholder, Steve Denning, trust, values, W.L. Gore, Whole Foods | 2 Comments