Senior leadership teams and Boards make important decisions everyday. Some are strategic and long-term; others are operational, financial or people-centred. Some are taken with considerable time and analysis; others need to be made quickly in the face of uncertainty. Yet the quality of a decision is not determined simply by Read more
The notion that organisations need a clear, guiding strategic principle (or ‘north star’) has been around for many years. For example, as far back as the 1970s management guru Peter Drucker stressed the importance of defining carefully the business you are in. This article by McGrath – entitled ‘The Power Read more
Of course, everyone thinks. But thinking effectively is a rare skill. Sadly most people are taught – or led – what to think, but not how to think. So, what’s involved in thinking well? Here’s a list of a dozen, strong indicators: 1).Purpose-driven: Good thinking is always directed at serving Read more
For decades, if a team was effective and successful, its performance was ascribed normally to the role and abilities of the team’s leader. The leader was seen as the ‘hero’ of the team, essentially responsible almost single-handedly for the team’s results! But this elevated view of the leader was always Read more
Today’s fast-changing and uncertain world needs leaders to have smart thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills. However, research strongly indicates that generally leaders do not have such skills. For example, a global survey in 2019 of business leaders by McKinsey found that fewer than half of respondents considered that decisions in Read more
Most training in leadership has traditionally emphasized the cultivation of functional knowledge or skills (e.g. finance, operations) and a focus on ‘hard’ outputs like profits. But growing research evidence points to how most leaders need to do more to inspire and engage their employees. For example, a global 2016 survey Read more
Differences in opinions and even conflict are a common part of life nowadays. What’s more, in today’s so-called ‘post-truth’ society, everyone’s particular opinion on an issue counts and, of course, many opinions can become polarised or extreme thanks often to the influence of social media. For most people in their Read more
Most organisations have a natural, in-built bias to maintaining the status quo. To a large extent this is often because leaders think their previous decisions are still appropriate, or simply, of course, because change itself is often hard. If leaders do make change, often they prefer to make just incremental Read more
Strategic thinking is a skill-set and approach that everyone in an organisation – not just senior managers – can practice and apply to help how they do their own job and improve the decisions and choices they need to make. Being strategic is not just about business or organisational-level strategy Read more
How good are you at strategic thinking? Certainly, it’s a skill expected of most leaders today. But, despite lots written on the subject of strategy (like on leadership!) over recent decades, there doesn’t appear to be any consistent definition of exactly what it means to ‘think strategically’. In my view, Read more