Human brains are quite inefficient cognitive machines. All of us regularly fail to see things accurately around us, we make poor assumptions, we misremember facts, we give in to cognitive biases, and we often make decisions based on emotional whims, Read more…
Here are a dozen reasons for hiring a professional, external strategy facilitator, rather than using an internal staff member or Board member to take on the role: 1) Independence: An external facilitator will bring a detached, ‘outside-in’ perspective. In contrast, Read more…
Do you consider yourself to be a strong, independent thinker ? Are you proud you can formulate your own thoughts and make decisions on your own ? Certainly, the idea of thinking for oneself is often seen as a valuable Read more…
In today’s world, most challenges and problems need the work of a team, rather than just an individual working alone. The key ingredient is the ‘collective intelligence’ of the group as a whole, which can usually deal much better with Read more…
Most leaders today are aware how ‘cognitive biases’ (e.g. ignoring some new evidence because it contradicts an existing belief you hold) can distort organisational decision-making. The difficulty is that biases are mostly unconscious things and so it can be very Read more…
Strategic leadership is a key responsibility for any board of directors, but in charities and other non-profits it can often be quite a weakness, unfortunately. A key issue is that at very many charities trustees often have limited knowledge of Read more…
In today’s fast-changing world where there is often pressure to get results faster, it is tempting for leaders to focus their thinking on the short-term and define goals and projects that will deliver results quickly. Indeed, the move in recent Read more…
Traditional strategic planning is dying. In today’s dynamic world fewer and fewer organisations are practising the traditional process of ‘forecast ahead, prepare 3-year plan, then implement’. This rigid, ‘top-down’ approach is in complete contrast to the approach used today by Read more…
Dedicated in-person strategic ‘away-day’ meetings have long been a regular event in the diary for Board members or senior staff at many organisations. Sadly, of course the coronavirus has made such meetings inappropriate, so leaders have had to get used Read more…
Every organisation faces the need for serious or radical change sometimes. A time when just making more incremental or small-scale changes won’t be enough. This is when words like ‘transformation’ and ‘transformational leadership’ are perhaps banded about to refer to Read more…