Thoughts – Page 48 – Reimagine. Strategy.

November 9, 2020May 3, 2022

Collective Reimagining

Just because you’ve never seen it before — or maybe no one has seen it before — doesn’t make something impossible.

My perfect storm of inspiration this week came from reading Rob Hopkins’ From What Is to What If on the same day that Kamala Harris became Vice-President Elect of the United States. In her victory speech, she called for people to “…dream with ambition, lead with conviction and see yourselves in a way that others may not, simply because they’ve never seen it before.” Continue reading “Collective Reimagining”

November 2, 2020May 3, 2022

Disrupting our Defaults

Default settings exist so that we don’t have to make conscious decisions about too many things over and over again. They move choices onto autopilot for us. That’s a very useful thing, as our brains can hold far more in our unconscious zones than in our conscious ones. Making too many decisions is exhausting. (If you’re curious how Obama handled decision fatigue during his presidency, have a look here.) Continue reading “Disrupting our Defaults”

October 26, 2020October 26, 2020

Building Culture in COVID

Employers in the midst of COVID are walking a tightrope between creating a supportive work environment and ensuring work gets done. Chronic uncertainty added to varying risk tolerance levels among staff and perhaps the legacy of precedents set in March/April that are no longer sustainable in October/November are making this a very tricky time. Rigid pandemic safety rules and mission-critical work combine awkwardly with a desire to create employment situations that are both flexible and equitable across teams. Continue reading “Building Culture in COVID”

October 19, 2020May 3, 2022

Sightlines Under Stress

Strategizing in a time of uncertainty is difficult, partly because we often think planning requires some measure of ability to predict what will happen in the future, and right now our crystal ball is very much broken.

I would suggest that while staying aligned with an unpredictable context makes strategic planning challenging, the process is less about clairvoyance and more about conviction.

And here’s where things get tricky right now. Continue reading “Sightlines Under Stress”

October 12, 2020May 3, 2022

Unexpected Lessons in International Cooperation

I wrote a chapter in a book that features the work of 18 authors, 16 in Australia and New Zealand, one in the US and me, the lone Canadian. It was released the day before writing this blog.

The launch has been astonishing. I awoke this morning to this note from one of the co-editors in Australia: Continue reading “Unexpected Lessons in International Cooperation”