‘Docking’: when everything about your business is in flow
In ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ movies, I saw little space crafts approaching the mother ship in outer space and clicking into place in their docking station. What struck me was the tightness of fit: the spacecraft was a perfect match for the ‘parking spot’. The feeling of being docked is comfortable and exciting in equal […]
The truth of what’s unfolding in business
Once upon a time, businesses were small: mom and Pop stores catering to a local market. Fossil fuels arrived in the 1900s, and businesses needed bigger machines and more people. This industrialisation powered a century-long business boom. Lots of wealth was created, and businesses became valuable. Stock markets formed to measure this value: short-term reporting […]
How to revitalise a business: renew its Life Force
In tidal pools, the ebb and flow of the water level is what drives its sustainability. Organisms have to adapt when the tide retreats. When the tide returns, the organisms are renewed. Adaptation lies at the heart of preservation. Similarly, a caterpillar literally dissolves into a nutrient ‘soup’ before becoming a butterfly. Nothing of its […]
Why do we resist transformation (using marriage as a metaphor)?
A butterfly has to be poisoned out of its chrysalis to become its beautiful self. Poisoned at its own hand. That’s how hard the butterfly needed to be self-coaxed to change. My observation of broad society is that very few people are adequately prepared for the journey of life, and many flounder for their entire […]
Your problem is your Operating Model: Choose ‘new’
All the questions about business best practices, new approaches, different techniques, how to lead, how not to lead, ladder up to the same question: What is the right Operating Model for your business? But what if the Operating Model that a vast majority of businesses are using is wrong? What if it was no longer […]
Repetition is persuasive
“But I’ve told them this so many times!” I’ve heard this refrain from dozens and dozens of CEOs in my work. What interests me is the assumption, which clearly doesn’t hold true, that a singular mention of CEO-type messaging will do the trick. ‘The Forgetting Curve’ is a theory created by Hermann Ebbinghaus, who proved […]
A simple way to handle complex change (involving elephants …)
‘Switch’ is a very good book about managing change, with an elegant framework that can be very helpful if you – like most leaders – are in the midst of transition. My contention is that every business is going through some kind of change at any given time. I’ve written in my previous letter about […]
The bubbling of coming changes
Beneath the soil, there is a marvellous alchemy taking place, long before the flower, tree or plant emerges fully formed. That alchemy takes place in the dark: the worms, the decomposed leaves, the bugs, the seeds, the fertilising agents, the nutrients. None of it is seen, none of it has light shone onto it, and […]
Recognising the master-state of your business
Businesses used to be ‘closed systems’: impervious to external forces. What a pleasure this must have been for business owners: a smaller, predictable universe to operate in where surprises were few and disruptions were minimal. Not so today. A business feels like a tiny vessel being buffeted by high winds and stormy seas, thus creating […]
What to do when your business is plateauing
A plateauing business is one of the most tricky and nuanced organisational states to solve, primarily because of the absence of a clear and present danger that might otherwise prompt decisive action. A plateauing state seeps in slowly and becomes normalised over time. Such a business, in my view, fundamentally lacks ‘Life Force’, which is […]