Posts
Strategic Doing for Faith Communities
At the heart of the Strategic Doing discipline is connection – how we connect with one another so that we can think and do together. When we connect we are able to get more done, to innovate, and to accelerate transformation in our organizations, our communities, and for our planet. What Is Strategic Doing? Strategic Doing…
A Course for Undergrads: The Science and Practice of Complex Collaboration
About the Course SPRING 2020 | TECH 39900 CRN15802| ENGR 39600 CRN15813 Want to improve how your groups and teams work together? Want to showcase to your future employers a valuable set of skills? If so, this course is for you. This course is unique. Nothing quite like it is offered at any other university. The Purdue…
Strategic Diversity powered by AEM-Cube
Strategy, growth, and innovation are team sports, not solo ventures. Complex undertakings like these require a variety of ideas, mindsets, and areas of expertise to achieve results. This required variety doesn’t rest within the mind or experiences of an individual. Groups, organizations, and even groups of organizations have a much better chance of designing the…
BrainPower Analytics
Resumes and transcripts. Job postings and interviews. These are important artifacts in the matchmaking that occurs between job candidates and the organizations that hire them. They often do a good job of helping match the knowledge, experience, and qualifications acquired by the candidate and required for the job. What they don’t do very well, however, is explicitly communicate a way…
Agile Leadership
Our companies, our communities, and our planet are facing unprecedented challenges – challenges that will not be solved by a small group of people from a single entity. Today’s leaders need a new mindset and skillset designed to harness the power of collaborative networks. These networks span the boundaries that are holding us back: organizational…
Strategic Doing
Strategy, as an organizational discipline, got its real start with the military – the term comes from a Greek word meaning “generalship.” Fast forward a few millennia, and we know it best in the context of “strategic planning,” a field that got a big boost in the 50s and 60s as it was introduced in…
The Growth Curve: Know Where You Are?
Growth. Whether as individuals, organizations, communities, or economies, most of us are interested in continued growth. Growth may mean something different to different people and organizations and at various stages in our personal and organizational lives. For many, growth means getting bigger or creating more wealth. For others, the motivation to grow is to increase…
Is Your Landscape Dancing?
Over the last few years, my colleagues and I have develop a new set of tools and insights designed to help leaders and their organizations to be more agile and adaptive. Like any start-up, in the early days, we were looking for business anywhere. We had a hammer and everything looked a whole lot like…
Strategy: Map or App?
I’ve been in London part of this week for business. The first time I visited was in 1998. Navigating the city was much different back then compared to now. You could pick up a foldable map of the London Underground and try your best to select the best route to your destination. You could also,…
We Don’t Care What It Says On Your Business Card
Picture this scene. There’s a wicked problem that needs addressing and you’ve been invited to a meeting to consider a set of responses. As everyone gets settled, the organizer requests, “If you’ve brought business cards with you today, could you please get one out.” You reach for yours, noticing the sturdy feel of the cardstock…
Thinking Sideways
We’ve been reading about the Extended Mind Theory, first introduced by philosopher Andy Clark and cognitive scientist David Chalmers. According to the theory, a person’s mind, and cognitive processing, are not limited to their head or even their body. The Extended Mind extends into the person’s world. For instance, Clark and Chalmer suggest the mind extends to objects.…
What If Strategy Was Everyone’s Job…for One Hour per Month?
One hour a month, that’s all we ask. In a given month, most people work 160 hours, give or take. So, 1/160th is our rule-of-thumb for a commitment to strategy. This is a key component to our approach to strategy at the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab. Everyone participating in the strategic thinking also participates in the…