Blog

In our work to help organisations make their strategies stick we often start by helping the executives get clear on their purpose. Why does their enterprise exist? If you have facilitated these types of sessions you probably seen this happen a million times: the group circles in on the essence of what’s important and then […]

This evening I was reading Business Model Generation (thanks Tom Graves for sending me a copy). It’s an approach for designing your business model and comparing it with others, such as your competitors. It is one of many approaches that illustrates the phenomenal effort that goes into developing business models and strategies. Yet despite all […]

I’m off to Malaysia in May to help run a leadership development program for a telecommunication company. While I’m there I’m meeting senior leaders from a range of companies and government departments and showing them our strategic story work. As an ex-IBMer I remember our CEO at the time, Lou Gerstner, say that strategies are […]

Every company wants to tell a compelling strategic story that conveys the essence of what they’re about. If it’s a success their customers and employees will know where they have come from and where they are going and what makes them unique and worthwhile. And with this knowledge they become attracted to what they are […]

Anecdote helps you harness the natural power of stories to bring your strategy to life. We help you tell your strategic story and then engage your employees in the strategic process so everyone has a hand in creating it. The result is a strategy everyone understands in concrete, specific terms where the level of commitment […]

On a recent trip to Canberra I was lining up to board the plane. Behind me was a young family. Their young son, probably four or five, was quizzing his dad. The boy said: “Why are we in the line?” “Because we are getting on the plane,” his dad replied. “Why are we getting on […]

In my hands is a corporate strategy. It’s a glossy six-page document designed for every employee to memorise and enact. There are seven themes each with three sub-themes. There are also seven values. All the information is presented as dot points well set out with lots of white space for easy reading. Sadly this strategy […]

In 2004 Drew Westen and his colleagues put together an experiment to see how people of a particular political persuasion (Democrat or Republican) make sense of new information. Drew is a neuroscientist and advises political candidates on how to garner voter support. In this experiment he scanned the brains of 15 committed Democrats and 15 […]

Today’s Australian Financial Review (p7) reports on the release of a study funded by the federal government. The report, titled ‘Management Matters in Australia: Just how productive are we?’ demonstrates what we know intuitively..that if a company can lift management performance, it will be a key factor in improving company financial performance. The report found […]

Most organisations I know have a set of stated values. You know what I mean, things like integrity, professionalism, respect for the individual. And in most cases they’ve been developed for the wrong reasons. And when developed for the right reasons, most employees don’t understand what the values mean anyway. Let me explain. Often the […]