Business Strategy

Have you noticed the fundamental disconnect between hot business-topics and recurring challenges that confuse and bewilder the majority of decision makers worldwide? If so, you must have recognized that the methods and tools people like to talk about have hardly any bearing on what a business system needs in order to be effective, sustainable, and

Back in 2010, IBM conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,541 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders from around the world. Seventy-nine percent of all participants said they were anticipating a rapid escalation in their business’s levels of complexity―in addition to uncertainty and volatility. More than half of these leaders doubted their own ability to

Do you recognize the following pattern? Employees are expected to be creative, think outside the box, in order to innovate products and services, including the very business processes that create and deliver those value propositions. Yet, their ideas are judged on the existence of scientific–peer-reviewed–evidence, or on what thought-leaders have to say on the topic,

Question:   Why are systemic problems seemingly without solution? Answer:   Because of the decision maker’s insistence to adhere to specific familiar beliefs, rules, theories, best-practices, or the use of specific and generally preferred resources, thereby effectively maintaining the status-quo. Consequently, the obstacle to finding an appropriate solution in a timely manner is not due to a

Two thirds of all executive leaders participating in IBM’s worldwide study Capitalizing on Complexity admitted to being bewildered and befuddled by complexity. Being perplexed by the complexly interconnected nature of the business processes for which they assumed ultimate responsibility foreshadows their ineffectiveness at leading change initiatives to resolve systemic problems, and to steer the company

Why are we expected to always DO something? Why is work generally perceived as something physical? Why is thinking dismissed as being idle? And, why is that weird perception so characteristic of Americans? I can tell you from writing The Root Cause that thinking what to write was more exhausting than tapping my fingers on

Oftentimes, knowledge comes from unexpected sources! Discovery of those nuggets depends on one’s ability to associate and read between the lines. This requires a curious and alert mind. Because it is not unusual to find all kind of solutions, participants, and choice opportunities when we’re not experiencing any problems to which they can be attached,

The true disruptive element of any form of disruptive technology is HUMAN THOUGHT! The technology itself is just an effect, whereas thought is its cause. This cause and effect relationship is the most fundamental law of the universe. Then, why do we celebrate technology and dismiss thought as no-real-work? It was said that Henry Ford

Have you ever wondered how much THOUGHT went into the creation of Nike’s slogan “Just Do It”? Do you realize that THOUGHT made the Wright brothers succeed where their contemporaries failed? No wonder; THOUGHT is the cause in any cause and effect relationship. Who is not looking for answers to their perplexing questions? However, living