'Strategy by Any Other' Name by Walter Kiechel

A friend who books speakers for business events tells me strategy experts aren't much in demand these days; indeed, they haven't been for years. (Except in Japan.) Until recently audiences still sought out thinker/talkers on innovation or leadership. Of late, though, the rabble has ears only for economists or the occasional journalist who can shed light on the Global Financial Crisis (and perhaps wave a pitchfork in Wall Street's direction).
So much for us who wear the big "S" on our sandwich-boards. You may, if you're so inclined, shed a tear for us wallflowers, but weep not for our underlying subject. While I'm thoroughly biased, it strikes me that strategy shows up all over the place in contemporary management literature, albeit sometimes under different cover. It's not exactly a case, per Jerry Lee Lewis, of "He's walking in my tracks, but he can't fill my shoes." More that the latest marching bands are parading down strategy's road, and lengthening it, but under banners bearing new devices, not the tattered regimental colors of old.

Het belang van samenwerkende professionals binnen organisaties

Een groot deel van het Nederlandse bedrijfsleven en van overheidsorganisaties werkt met zelfstandige professionals die in goed samenspel diensten en producten realiseren en bijdragen aan de organisatieontwikkeling van een organisatie.

Een goede professional die zijn vak verstaat, kan zonder prikkeling van buitenaf en levert wat noodzakelijk is. Omdat hij dat kan en wil, maar ook omdat hij weet dat hij degene is die deze bijdrage moet leveren. Maar deze professionals kunnen echter niet meer zonder elkaar. Daarvoor is de wereld te complex en te dynamisch geworden. Een arts alleen bijvoorbeeld kan een patiënt niet meer gezond maken. Dat gaat van huisarts, naar cardioloog, naar internist en weer terug. Een goede samenwerking tussen de professionals is daarom een vereiste voor een organisatie. Maar hoe zorg je ervoor dat deze samenwerking zo goed mogelijk verloopt?

Als het succes van jouw organisatie afhankelijk is van goed samenspelende professionals, klik dan hier om het volledige essay aan te vragen voor een uitgebreid antwoord op bovenstaande vraag. 

Bron: De Kameleon organisatie, Martijn de Jong; Copyright AMI, 2008.

Management as hedgehog thinking by Chris Mowles

I was invited by a small organisation which had been involved for over a year in human rights advocacy work to join them for an away-day where they wanted to reflect on their practice and think about what to do next. With very few resources they had achieved a lot. They had encouraged a number of disparate organisations to work together, had hosted conferences and workshops, had set up meetings between colleagues in developing countries coming from the developing South to speak directly to decision-makers in embassies and in UN meetings, and had developed a credible news service on the particular set of interests that concerned them. They were working in an intensely political environment and needed to respond quickly and authoritatively. The particular issue they were concerned with was vigorously contested, and their ability to take action was based on the strength of the relationships they could form with others, on the recognition of their legitimacy but in a context where events could shift the potential for action very quickly and very dramatically.

AMI consultancy implementation lesson: Learning is conscious experimentation

Implementation is the development of the ability to consciously learn from new experiences. This learning capacity is the catalyst for individual and collective growth. Individual learning is a process of choosing, experimenting, analysing and reflecting. This may be entirely clear and logical on paper, but in practice it's a bit harder than it looks.

• Good choices demand insight and self-awareness.
• Experimentation demands preparation and daring.
• Analysis requires receiving feedback and looking at the facts.
• Reflecting demands objectivity and drawing conclusions.

And then, you start the process all over again. And always document the individual experiences in a logbook. The transition from the "thinking mode" to the "doing mode" is a particularly difficult one. On the individual, personal level, the first insight can be a major breakthrough in itself. But it's easy to get sidetracked by the pleasure of the thinking side. Because without action, there can be no experimentation and no insight. Actions generate new energy, set direction and shape new possibilities.
The step from individual learning to a learning group (team, department or organisation) is something very different. The "learning to learn" from mutual knowledge and experiences demands a time investment and patient and ongoing training and practice of the principles of peer review. Succeeding here depends on the discipline of working on this as a matter of routine. In our implementation support, we consistently invest in building up and promoting learning capacity. With coaching-on-the-job, simulations, work assignments, process evaluations and peer review.

Raymond Maas is managing partner of AMI consultancy.

Wat is het effect van een klankbordgroep in projectrealisatie?

De vele klankbordgroepen (met vaak een onheldere status) die in het begin van projectorganisatie 

ontstaan, kunnen het tempo in het project breken en de projectbegeleiding extra werk opleveren. Een klankbordgroep voor de gebruikers vanaf de start kan echter zeer behulpzaam zijn.

Wat is jouw mening over een klankbordgroep binnen projectrealisatie? 

Reageer hieronder en/of deel deze post via Twitter of Facebook met je vrienden en relaties en zie wat hun mening hierover is. 

Bron: Project- en procesmatig werken, Martijn Jong, Raymond Maas, Wouter Visser, Chris Wigboldus; Copyright AMI, 2009.
(Vraag hier het gehele essay aan)

'A new paradigm for change' by John Elkington

 In an MBA world, I remain an unreconstructed, unrepentant MPhil. And that degree was in city planning in the last century, not business management in this one. Still, I have now spent 35 years helping CEOs and other leaders wake up to—and tackle—the new risks and opportunities thrown up as a series of societal pressure waves have pounded, shaped, and powered markets.
Time and again, against a seemingly chaotic backdrop, I have found myself defaulting to a standard MBA device—the 2×2 matrix—in an attempt to extract signal from noise. Another tic is to populate the matrix cells with sharks, orcas, sea lions, and dolphins (mapping stakeholder engagement in the mid-1990s) or locusts, caterpillars, butterflies, and honeybees (when exploring 21st-century economic models as the new millennium launched). There’s method to the apparent madness, however, in that the visuals can help engage a wider audience.

Creating large-scale change: Not 'can' but 'how'

By Professor J. Gregory Dees

 

Skeptics of social entrepreneurship often comment, “Sure, social entrepreneurs are doing good things, but can they ever scale their impact sufficiently to put a dent in the enormous and persistent problems we face?” Scaling impact is a very serious and challenging issue, but we need a better way of framing the conversation. Thus I would like to challenge the value of starting with the question: “Can social entrepreneurs create large-scale change?”