“MA”, OR THE SPACE IN BETWEEN
THE WAY OF STRATEGY IN A TIME OF DARKNESS AND LIGHTS SERIES (PART 1) A way is not a plan. A plan is delivered, a way is walked. When the road ahead is lit, a plan will do. When it…
Keep readingKEEPING THE ROCKS AND THROWING AWAY THE ORGANIZATION: THE FUTURE OF SMALL FIRMS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA
LEADING THROUGH THE INTELLIGENCE AGE SERIES (PART 3) The world is being rewired in real time, and most organizations are not built for it. So it is worth asking a blunt question: how many businesses have actually survived, and thrived,…
Keep reading“FINALLY ON SIDE BY SIDE FROM NOUGHT ANEW”: WHAT TRUE LEADERS OWE TO THIS MOMENT IN TIME
LEADING THROUGH THE INTELLIGENCE AGE SERIES (PART 2) In “Company” published in 1979, Beckett returns to that refrain again and again throughout his piece , as if starting over were not a failure but the only honest way forward. It…
Keep readingGOING ON BEING IN THIS STRANGE WORLD
Why the Old Sources of Meaning Have Run Out — and What Organisations Can Build in Their Place.. Before We Talk About Purpose I have carried a passage from Baudrillard for over a decade. It is the bleakest, most precise…
Keep readingWHAT DOES IT TAKE TO TRUST?
The Condition Every Organisation Claims to Want and Almost None Have Built. Before We Talk About Culture I have been working in a lot of rooms. Leadership teams in Paris, boardrooms in Singapore, strategy sessions in Geneva, Cairo, Ahmedabad, Melbourne…
Keep readingTHIS IS THE MOMENT THE AID SECTOR BECOMES WHAT IT ALWAYS PROMISED TO BE.
Why the Global Development System Must Learn to Think Together — Starting Now. Before the Argument Starts. I have spent more than a decade working alongside these organizations. WHO. UNDP. GAVI. WFP. World Bank Group. In Geneva, yes — but…
Keep readingOF PATCHES AND NODES: RETHINKING HOW ORGANIZATIONS MOVE AT THE SPEED OF CHANGE
We are living through a period that defies the logic of the organizations we inherited. The hierarchical model that shaped the twentieth century was built for a world that changed slowly enough to be managed from the top down. It…
Keep readingLEADING THROUGH THE INTELLIGENCE AGE: THE 4 CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER MORE THAN EVER
W. Ross Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety is one of the foundational principles of cybernetics — the science of how complex systems regulate themselves and maintain autonomy in the face of disruption. Its formulation is deceptively simple: “Only variety can…
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