Agile Strategy
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…
Read MoreWe 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…
Read MoreThinking 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.…
Read MoreWhat 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…
Read MoreReminiscing Forward: Guiding Others Toward a Future They Cannot Quite See Yet
“Daddy, I like thinking about our family at Christmas time. It makes me feel all warm inside.” My son Oliver came to me with this observation when he was about nine years old. A neuroscientist would tell us that what my son was feeling, that warm-inside sensation, was a powerful cocktail made up of some…
Read MoreWant Your Organization to be a “Virtuoso” Performer?
At the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab we are working with virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma; and doing so is helping us better understand agility. In fact, Yo-Yo has written the forward to our new book, Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership (Wiley) available May 7, 2019. Part of what makes a great musician a…well…great musician, is their brain’s…
Read MoreComplex or Complicated?
Complex or complicated? Which term better describes what you and your community or organization is facing? Rocket science is complicated. Addressing the opioid crisis is complex. Reducing vehicle emissions by 10% is complicated. Addressing climate change is complex. Complex challenges demand new approaches to strategy and the science of collaboration becomes extremely important. That’s where…
Read MoreStrategy Is a Team Sport
One of the theories embedded within our approach to strategy at the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab is the Law of Requisite Variety introduced by W. Ross Ashby. The idea is that a complex challenge (one with a lot of variety) requires a solution that is equally complex, a solution with a lot of variety. That’s why we focus on…
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