Articles
Risk Roundabout
By Julian Jenkins, 16/09/2011
There's nothing like a good, solid financial crisis and a number of high profile corporate failures to focus minds on risk-management processes. Being associated with a major corporate collapse or near-death experience is a career-limiting move, even for those with long-standing reputations.
Now is a very good time for leaders to think hard about how to protect themselves from the sort of risks that could destroy the personal and organisational value they have spent years carefully cultivating.
To avoid falling into traps in the future we need new thinking, not just a commitment to be more rigourous about applying the same methods we've used in the past. Following are the four key elements we need to think to better manage and deal with risk.
Revise the definition
The new ISO 31000 standard (which is largely based on the existing Australian standard), defines risk as "the impact of uncertainty on objectives", which might make sense to risk specialists, but doesn't...
How design offers strategy a new toolkit
By Tony Golsby-Smith, 16/09/2011
A friend of mine with a background in media recently found himself in the role of CEO of a major government department. One of the first things he noticed is how abused the word 'strategy' is: everything has to be a strategy in order to get noticed. He was sure someone would have a strategy for visiting the restrooms. But the second thing he noticed was that no one was actually thinking strategically: the more the word was used, the less meaningful it became.
It should be like this. Strategy should be the process that enables organisations to create new futures and engage their people in exciting tasks. Instead, it mostly weighs on an organisation down with more data and inputs.
Arguably the strategy process is one of the weakest processes in most organisations. They are far better equipped with the tools for operational management and 'defending the status quo' than they are for inventing and shaping new futures, and there is a good reason for this: modern organisations exist...
Rational numbers don't always add up
By Roger Martin, 16/09/2011
What do Cirque du Soleil, Apple and Procter & Gamble have in common, besides being the most successful global players in their respective fields? Each has played a critical part in showing that analytics is not the only way of driving and measuring business success. We are seeing the reversal of a century-long pendulum swing, and design now sits at the heart of a rising number of innovative companies.
For the past century, dating back to the stopwatch-wielding days of Frederick Winslow Taylor, an American engineer and arguably the first management consultant, business has moved towards ever more intensive scientific management. From Statistical Process Control to Six Sigma to Supply Chain Management to Decision Support Software, business has become ever more quantitative, analytical and algorithmic.
But forward thinking business executives have begun to recognise that this approach has overreached.
They read the crisp reports that spit out of their enterprise resource...
From creation to innovation
By Tony Golsby-Smith, 18/07/2011
The art of management is ripe for reinvention and there is a growing race in the world to reframe management education. The goal of the race is clear: people want to create a new class of managers, who can lead innovation, not just administer.
In the American and British universities that are pioneering reform in management education, they theme is the same- they are mixing design and business to create a new breed of manager. I believe we need to go even further and introduce a third pillar, but more on that later.
The universities in the US and Britain are introducing design because it has inadvertently been the safe harbour for a kind of thought that the rest of the business academy has neglected: invention. Designers approach problems very differently to managers, and using design-thinking stretches the art of management and organisational competence
outside the organisation to include its customers and their experience. These are things we cannot control on run spread...
Designs on Innovation
By Brad Graham, 18/07/2011
For decades, corporate Australia has been over reliant on data and analytics to guide decision making, often at the expense of innovation.
The old adage "numbers don't lie" is something many business leaders have readily adopted as their modus operandi. The issue with these numbers is that while they can help you understand the present they can't help you imagine the future.
This is why many management teams are now mastering a new set of techniques captured under the umbrella of 'design thinking'. What these techniques do is stretch the art of management and strategy development to help people envision new futures- things we cannot 'control' through data, spreadsheets or analysis.
Creative tools and techniques taken from the design profession, used to create such design
oriented products as the iPod or ergonomic chairs, are being employed to transform business process, re-invent corporate strategy, re-invent corporate strategy, create new products and professional...
The Right Environment for Design
By Julian Jenkins, 18/07/2011
Without changes in a company's attitudes and processes, the investment in design may never pay off. Julian Jenkins identifies nine "cults" that thwart the commitment to this resource. He also outlines the qualities of a design-friendly culture and proposes seven steps design managers can take to help ensure that their contributions yield the most creative and beneficial outcomes.
The city of Sydney has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. According to a recent study by Danish architect and urban planning guru Jan Gehl, Sydney has squandered the extraordinary natural advantages provided by its stunning harbor. Instead of encouraging a vibrant, people-friendly city, its leaders have allowed a soulless urban environment to emerge, clogged by traffic and cut off from the water by major freeways and rail infrastructure.
Leadership Strategies in Design Management
By Maureen Thurston, 18/07/2011
Whether the effort concerns organisational vision, product development, or branding, design is essential to success. Contributors reveal where and how it benefits performance. They offer insights on the nature of design strategy. They articulate brand design principles and share brand and product case studies, including a fascinating story about Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. Looking into the future, one author provocatively urges colleagues to improve the way people live and work, exploit yet- untapped energy resources that do not degrade the environment, and expand automation to reduce toil and to free human capital.
Design Leadership
By Maureen Thurston, 18/07/2011
The protagonist of this essay is design, or rather, a way of thinking of it as a strategic initiative leveraged throughout an organisation. The antagonist is the myopic mindset that design is only a linear, tactical exercise restricted to the development of a product, package, or promotion. Best-in-class quality, production prowess, and persuasive marketing no longer guarantee success or profit. As products and services become more commoditized, leveraging design as an organisational, cross-functional goal has become critically important to sustaining competitive advantage.
Visionary leadership with strong character
By Tony Golsby-Smith, 04/02/2011
Tony Abbott has described the election as a "soap opera" but he is wrong. It is much more like a bad version of Donald Trump's The Apprentice where we watch desperate young people crawl all over each other in pursuit of a powerful job.
What makes this worse is that it feels more like middle managers applying for that job rather than true leaders. It does not feel like the contest of ideas between people with a compelling picture of what it will take for this country to be successful in future generations.
One of the factors driving this mediocrity is the rise of focus groups as a major way to inform policy. Julia Gillard and Abbot are reading from scripts, and cautiously treading through a minefield of what not to say that has been mapped out for them by spin doctors on the back of focus groups...