Complex Ideas For A Competent You
Hidden Potential was recommended to me by my career coach when I told her I was starting this blog. And for a good reason. Apart from being a knowledgeable educator, Adam Grant is a great storyteller. He masterfully weaves useful concepts and practical advice into engaging stories - not the other way around. The stories… Continue reading Introducing “Hidden Potential”: Imperfect Sea Sponges Seeking Discomfort
Alison Gopnik, one of the leading researchers in developmental psychology, introduced a "lantern consciousness" metaphor to describe how children learn. Babies take in their surroundings all at once, like "a lantern casting light in all directions." As adults, we have "spotlight consciousness" - we focus on the activity at hand and direct our light only… Continue reading Concluding “Time Off”: Be A Lantern
Most of the reviews I read about Time Off: A Practical Guide To Building Your Rest Ethic And Finding Success Without The Stress claimed that this book was about rest ethic. I don't agree with that - at least not entirely. I think Time Off is about rest ethic as much as it is about… Continue reading “Time Off” Deep Dive: How Long Do You Let Your Ideas To Incubate?
It's a summer morning. The rays of the August sun wake you up before anyone else in your house. You open your eyes and remember that today is your day off. You don't have to be anywhere, you don't have to do anything, and you are completely free of any obligation or concern. Today is… Continue reading Introducing “Time Off”: Are You Living Like It’s “Milk O’clock”?
As we conclude our journey into Strategy Safari, the school of strategic thought that encompasses all of those we already saw - the configuration school of strategic management - greets us in all its glory and... simplicity. In this article, we will explore this simplicity further. How it embraces and makes sense of the competing… Continue reading “Strategy Safari” Deep Dive: Finding Your Next Strategic Configuration
Forget about the CEO and his planners sitting out there in the ivory tower (unless, of course, you are a CEO, in which case please leave your ivory tower, it's not the 1960s anymore!). This article explores the subject of power. Power of individuals, groups, and outside forces. How much power do you have? How much power does anyone have? Let's try to find out.
We hear a lot about "learning organizations". We accept without hesitation that continuous learning is a culprit of success and, perhaps, the only guaranteed stability in the ever-changing world around us. But when it comes to strategy - what does learning mean exactly? Is it learning from past mistakes? Or deliberately committing new ones to… Continue reading “Strategy Safari” Deep Dive: Do You Cultivate Your Strategies Like Tomatoes?
In the previous deep-dive article, we explored the prescriptive schools of strategy making (aka this-is-how-you-should-do-it schools). With this article, we are diving into an exciting world of the descriptive schools (aka this-is-how-you-are-actually-doing-it schools). The Entrepreneurial School: "Enter The Elephant's Rider!" If you recall my very first article on Strategy Safari, the authors compared strategy to… Continue reading “Strategy Safari” Deep Dive: How Accurate Is Your “Big Picture”?
This article explores the ideologies of the three "prescriptive" strategy-making schools: Design, Planning, and Positioning. The Design School emphasizes matching internal capabilities with external possibilities, led by the CEO. The Planning School formalizes strategy-making through detailed plans, while the Positioning School promotes a limited set of generic market strategies. Each school has critiques and limitations.
"Strategy Safari" is a "War and Peace" of the Management literature. Everyone says you should read it to acquire good taste for competent thought and get wiser but when you have time to read it, you are too young to understand it, and when you are finally old enough to understand it, you don't have… Continue reading Introducing “Strategy Safari”: Are You Sure Strategy Is What You Think It Is?
Knowledge In Action 