Complex Ideas For A Competent You
This article will be about management and strategy. I must say this upfront because, for my readers who aren't planning to get a chief of staff or become one, the book title Chief of Staff: The Strategic Partner Who Will Revolutionize Your Organization wouldn't seem to be of much interest. But if you have been… Continue reading Introducing “Chief Of Staff”: How The Chief Of Staff Role Reflects The Core Shift In Management And Leadership
There are books and there are Books. In strategic management (and management overall), Strategy Safari is one of those Books that you read once in a lifetime, and everything that you knew, thought you knew, and wish you had known falls into place. Then you give a sigh of relief... Only to realize that there… Continue reading Book Review: “Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds Of Strategic Management”
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 