The document discusses the evolving landscape of management and strategy, emphasizing the need for adaptability and innovative thinking in an unpredictable future. It critiques traditional performance evaluations and calls for a focus on strategic risk management and the importance of fostering a culture of entrepreneurship within organizations. Additionally, it highlights the significance of diversity, systems thinking, and organizational learning as essential enablers for navigating complex challenges and achieving sustainable success.

1. “the soft stuff is [really]
the hard stuff”
some thoughts on Strategy, Innovation & more...
rodney
buitendag
created jan 2010
updated nov 2011

2. strategyparadox
MichaelRaynor
The Board should not evaluate the CEO based on the company’s performance, but instead on the firm’s strategic risk profile
The CEO should not drive results, but manage uncertainty
Business unit leaders should not focus on execution, but on making strategic choices
Line managers should not worry about strategic risk, but devote themselves to delivering on commitments
Most strategies are built on specific beliefs about the future.
Unfortunately, the future is deeply unpredictable. Worse, the requirements of breakthrough
success demand implementing strategy in ways that make it impossible to adapt should the
future not turn out as expected. The result is the Strategy Paradox: strategies with the
greatest possibility of success also have the greatest possibility of failure
Resolving this paradox requires a new way of thinking about strategy and uncertainty.

3. The Future of Management
Gary Hamel with Bill Breen
Through history, management
innovation has enabled
companies to cross new
performance thresholds
and build enduring
advantages.
The management paradigm
of the last century - centered
on control and efficiency - no
longer suffices in a world
where adaptability and
creativity drive business
success. To thrive in the
future, companies must
reinvent management

4. One of my Honours courses was “To create a pervasive culture of
entrepreneurship. I’ll never innovation you must first create an environment
forget the insightful discovery of performance and motivation. Achieving
that I made doing research for a
this is often, paradoxically, the result of less
project. Almost without fail,
successful (and seriously
effort rather than harder work. Although goals and
performance targets are useful tools, they can also
wealthy) entrepreneurs, did not have a detrimental impact on results. When people
set out to make money per se... are future fixated, their creativity and overall
Money was not the goal, but to performance diminish. Find the sweet spot of
do something that they were optimal performance, and you will
passionate about really well. undoubtedly see an increase in employee
The lesson for me was to focus productivity, creativity, and
less on what I want to achieve, satisfaction…all with less effort.”
and more on the things that may
lead to the outcomes that I
desire.
- rodney
theperformanceparadox
StephenShapiro

5. priorities!focus
Tom Peters used to remind
executives that it mattered little
what they proclaimed to be their
top priorities. Instead, the "In
Search of Excellence" co-author
advised looking at your calendar
to reveal your main concerns,
because that is where you are
spending your time.
For that matter, why not also
look at your meetings? Analyse
the minutes and calculate the %
items that are strategic vs
operational.
Also consider how many items
are actually the responsibility of
people lower down in the
organisation? No problem
getting one’s hands dirty now
and then, but how do we
empower staff if we take on
their work?

6. we’re all so very
busy... but are we
Not only the
right things, but
at the right
doing the right
levels of work?
As individuals,
things?
and as an
organisation, are
we effective?

7. putting (some of) the pieces together
So you might wonder where What are the burning
I’m going with this... issues in our organisation
and what are our leaders
When the pressure’s on, we saying but not all doing...
focus on what we know and Mostly People Issues, the
what we do well. Strategy soft stuff, not so?
must be executed, results
delivered, shareholders kept After all, it’s the collective
happy... So we focus on all of the People working for
these things that we need to the organisation who are
achieve: our goals and going to make achieving
objectives, bonuses and the goals, the results,
incentives. Share Price. possible.
Outcomes.
All of us are faced with
With all this going on it’s too uncertainty, paradox,
easy to forget about the things contradiction, and
we need to do to achieve those complex problems almost
outcomes, the supporting daily.
initiatives, the co-producers,
the enablers... What are the tools, the
capabilities, the “not so
The People. obvious” that we as
individuals and us as an
The Change that is invariably organisation need to
being introduced into the focus on in order to deal
system. with these issues?

8. Future Levels
Studies of
Organisational Work Talent
Learning & Management
Development
Sustainability –
social, economic
Systems
& environmental
Thinking
Change
Management
Leadership Performance Innovation
Management
a few essential tools/capabilities/concepts to navigate in a
disruptive age [not exhaustive, but top of mind for me]

9. the “outcome-enabler” matrix
After thinking about the concepts on the previous slide long and
hard, it occurred to me that if we make a list of issues, we
typically list everything without necessarily analysing the
relationships between the items. In the same list would be our
goals/outcomes as well as resource issues and possibly
enablers for both of the aforementioned.
I came up with the idea of a
matrix to plot
issues/initiatives/ projects
according to the degree
which the benefits are easy
to quantify in financial terms
and the degree to which
they are people related.
Resources produce the
results (or outcomes) but
are supported by Enablers.

10. “outcome-enabler” example
Below is an example of how this could work, of course this should
be the outcome of a group process to identify relevant issues and
potential enablers. This is merely to illustrate the concept,
although I do also believe that regardless of the resource issues
and outcomes, the enablers that I’ve listed are “enduring” and
fundamental.
On the slides that
follow I will
briefly touch on
some of the
enablers, but note
that each is an
extensive
discipline in its
own right and most
of them are inter-
dependant at some
level. This is but
a snippet of the
whole story...

11. sustainability
it’s more than just the
environment – also
economic and social
procurement
practices, employment
practices
more than reporting on
carbon
footprint, recycling etc
it should be integral to
strategy and intrinsic in
what we do, personally

12. !nnovation The IBM Institute for Business Value recently
explored the future of insurance: “Insurance 2020:
Innovating beyond old models,” provides insight into
the question of why insurance appears to be a
lethargic industry in the use of innovation. This
“Innovation and study shows that insurers focus on the optimization
of products and processes and accept it as though it
entrepreneurship were innovation. However, the power of innovation
does not come simply from the use of a specific
have to become technology to overcome a problem, but from the
willingness to try something different.
an integral, life-
It is worth repeating over and over: we believe
sustaining activity innovation is the key to future success for insurance.
In the insurance industry, modifications of existing
in our products advertised as “new” were deemed
sufficient.
organizations, our As we move forward in time toward 2020, this
situation will no longer be the case. Customers will
economy, our know what they want and do not want – the
society.” insurer that does not innovate
soon will not be ready in time for
Peter F. Drucker, inevitable change.
Innovation and
Entrepreneurship IBM - Insurance 2020
Now what? Exploring initiatives for innovation

13. corporateforesight
This a concept that I came across only recently and that requires more
research. Z_Punkt defines it as “translating trend and future
research into the real world of innovation and strategic
management”.
This further illustrates my earlier statement about enablers being inter-
dependent. We cannot, for example, simply focus on Innovation in
isolation – what are the requirements for Innovation to flourish and
produce results, does it form part of some other “bigger picture”?

14. diversity
Tom Peters blogging on the importance of Diversity for
Innovation (Nov 2009)
Diversity Per Se. Sine Qua Non.
• Diversity/Every flavor/Management & Measurement.
Diversity with a lower-case "d."
Black, white, brown, purple ... tall, short ... North
American, Asian ... public school, private school, no
school ... etc. ... etc. (Etc.) Decision-making of every sort
is far, far better with diverse views of any flavor. Period. I
have come to view this as a gamechanger - for a 6-
person project team, a 20-person company, a huge
enterprise.
• Diversity/Hiring. Search every oddball corner of the world
for interesting people. Hire dull, get dull results. (Duh.)
Diversity is not a
(This holds across the board - and irrespective of the size
of the enterprise.)
race/culture issue,
• Diversity/Freak Acquisitions. I'm an enemy of 99% of
mega-mergers, and a vigorous ally of small acquisitions
people are
that allow skipping steps in obtaining interesting new
pieces of the puzzle for an enterprise. This can be the
diverse -
purchase of an intriguing 2-person accountancy by a 15-
person accountancy, as well as a small-acquisition overall
personality, attitude,
strategy by the likes of Cisco Systems. thoughts, mental
• Diversity/Promoting. Diversity of every stripe at every
level, achieved by design. Remember, diversity-qua- models, etc
diversity works.

15. Tom Peters ranting about talent...
We pay ever more lip-service to “people-power”, even as we
cling to our long-standing penchant for hiring and cultivating
obedient “employees”. We say that we take “talent”
seriously, while failing to transform our organisations in a way
that makes them truly talent-attractants.

16. concept: Organisational Learning
Peter Senge
The Five Disciplines of Organizational
Learning
Personal Mastery | Mental Models
Shared Vision | Team Learning
Systems Thinking
http://www.solonline.org/organizational_overview/
Peter Senge speaks about organisation culture (notes from an audio clip)
• Practices - define an organisation, visible aspects of org culture
• Values -> there’s what we say (espoused) and what we do, “unquestioned deep
assumptions”
• Learning in order to be a deep phenomena must transform organisational culture, must
lead people to recognise their unquestioned assumptions
• Learning is about letting culture evolve so that you can achieve what you didn’t before
• Learning & cultural change are always connected
To make Org Effectiveness a “reality”, we need to undergo “transformational change”
• Transformational Change a process that shifts us inside as well as out
• Inter-twines personal, team & organisation, even industry
• It’s about deep, systemic change – what’s most systemic is what’s most personal
• The “system” (organisation) evolves as a result of how people think
• It’s a process where we have to question taken-for-granted assumptions/mental models
• A process of reflection, questioning, of challenging ourselves and challenging the way we
do things

17. systems thinking
Most of us have heard of the Butterfly Effect referred to in Chaos Theory – how
a small change in one part of a system can trigger a massive change elsewhere.
Business is a complex system and Systems Thinking can help us “learn to better
understand interdependency and change, and thereby to deal more effectively
with the forces that shape the consequences of our actions.”
“It is based upon a growing body of theory about the behavior of feedback and
complexity - the innate tendencies of a system that lead to growth or stability
over time.”
Peter Senge

18. a sample transformation “system”
(based on a “complex project” I was a part of once)
Systems thinking in action...

19. purpose of this
presentation
Organisational
Effectiveness demands
change, change depends on
learning, learning depends
on challenging our current
state, and so on...
If all I achieve with this
presentation is to raise
awareness of some things
that we are either not doing
at all, or things that we are
doing but can do better,
then I’d feel that I’ve
achieved something.
We need to start intelligent
and meaningful
conversations about how we
can “up” the “enablers” to
produce results.