In my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners (now available for pre-order wherever you buy books), one of the major themes is that a major blind spot for organizations is that they tend to see the… Read more »
Insights and ideas
When Hierarchy Is Not an Option: A New Organizational Model for Fast-Moving Contexts
Earlier this month, I spoke at the Human Resources Directors Conference in the United Kingdom. At the conference, I shared some material excerpted from my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points… Read more »
10 Ways to Prepare for Career Changes in the Transient Advantage Economy
In the world of strategy, there’s been a long-held belief in a sustainable competitive advantage—you find an attractive place in an attractive industry, throw up entry barriers, and exploit the advantage for a long period… Read more »
How to Lead an Organization Through an Inflection Point
I was recently at a conference with Curt Carlson, a brilliant leader of innovation who for many years ran SRI, the research organization responsible for the invention of Apple’s Siri and many other multi-billion dollar… Read more »
Preparing for the 8th Annual Drucker Forum
A few years ago, I started attending the Global Peter Drucker Forum, which has become a real who’s who of management conferences. It takes place each November in Vienna and features luminaries and thought leaders… Read more »
Insight into unintended consequences-anticipating the effects of low oil prices
Over the years, I’ve cited and used some of the work done by the Futures Strategy Group principals in their development of very robust tools that help organizations anticipate (not predict) what might happen in… Read more »
Globalization is like migration, except nobody goes anywhere
This insightful article by my colleague Joseph Stiglitz is short and incredibly thought-provoking. In it, he argues that globalization essentially pits the lower-skilled workers of the world against each other, having the same effect as though lower-paid… Read more »
We were poor, but we didn’t know it – new transparency at #GPDF14
A topic of discussion at the Global Peter Drucker Forum last week was the effect that widespread digital information has on less well-off people’s views of their own situations. In the past, it was possible… Read more »
Stop expecting applause for just doing your job!
It happened again this morning – after taking my car to get some necessary maintenance, I received a breathlessly enthusiastic email asking whether I had any reason not to be thrillingly ecstatic with the service… Read more »
Whither golf? The iconic old boy’s game facing erosion?
If you spend any amount of time at corporate retreats, offsites and workshops, as I do, golf is ubiquitous. Bonding takes place on the course, the post-game conviviality is shared, and team-building exercises pairing golfers… Read more »
Don’t listen to what your customers say, watch how they behave
I am often asked by companies with whom I work whether focus groups, surveys or customer panels are useful in learning what customers want and more importantly, what they will pay for. Sure, these techniques… Read more »
Sustainable advantage, Transient Advantage and Organizational Change
In an insightful blog that is part of a series HBR is running on the intersection between Strategy and Innovation, editor Sarah Cliffe interviews colleague Don Sull, who argues that you can think of the… Read more »