In the Wizard of Oz, the heroine, Dorothy, finds herself on a quest with three companions; a scarecrow in need of a brain, a tin man with no heart and a lion without courage. In our troubled times, as businesses seek to navigate the uncertainty of the immediate future and think about how they need to adapt, the story is a good metaphor to encapsulate some of the biggest problems leaders are facing.
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Focus and the art of strategic thought: A common complaint of senior executives is that they don’t have enough time. Particularly they don’t have enough time to focus on thinking strategically. There seems always to be a deluge of things that are important – often defined by others. In parallel there is often a clichéd demand to achieve more with less.
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We don’t ask enough ‘dumb’ questions’. Dumb questions rather than wasting time or being the distraction you might assume are often highly valuable. They’re great and flushing out the assumptions in a situation. Far too often assumptions are implicit and therefore it’s not clear they are assumptions.
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High performing teams in the 21st century will be different, they will be structured differently, they will behave differently and they will prioritize different skills and characteristics. Those that get this right will give themselves an exceptional competitive advantage.
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What the Battle of the Somme can Teach Leaders About Learning Lessons
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Metris Leadership has recently been doing some work with a national retailer who places a high premium on their ability to innovate. They even have a President's prize, which gives a large financial incentive to anyone providing successful new ideas. But the truth is that the company actually isn’t very good at innovation and despite having the most engaged staff we have ever seen in a large business they are as flat footed as everyone else when it comes to innovation. Here is a quick analysis of why the culture around innovation is nearly always wrong and what you can do about it.
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Strategy is too often taken to mean no more than a plan – how I intend to achieve my objectives? Not much of a start point and the basis for a lot of confusion. In a military context Strategy can be defined as the use of force (or threat of force) to achieve political objectives, against the hostile will of an enemy. 3 things can usefully be understood from this:
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