An image of a chameleon

Chameleonic Cultures

When an organisation recalibrates to adopt a radically new strategy, most leaders focus on the changes in processes, practices and procedures. These are the mechanics of business, the easiest to measure and easier to implement. Successful change efforts engage both the mechanics and humanics of change. The humanics involves the community, collaboration and culture. In a world of constant change, organisations must adopt a “chameleonic” culture, one that is capable of rapid change in line with strategic change.

Hail-Mary-Pass

Throwing the Hail Mary Pass: Organisational Fight or Flight

Businesses throw Hail Marys when encountering a crisis, such as declining sales or disruptive innovation, or technology suddenly upends their business plan. Equally, leaders throw Hail Marys to meet analyst expectations when they have been coasting in the game for a long time. In sports, there is a thin line between arrogance and confidence, and business organisations often fall into the success trap.

Organisational Range Anxiety: Nothing Vast Enters Life Without a Curse

In today’s business world of flux, explore units are agile, decentralised, experimental cultures, loose work processes, strong entrepreneurial and technical competencies, and relatively young and neurodiverse employees. In contrast to the exploit units, these small entrepreneurial units are inefficient, rarely profitable, and have no established histories. They often deliberately violate the norms valued in older parts of the organization.

Because the explore units are wildly different from the exploit incumbent, explorers are often undermined by the parent company, whose short-term needs override exploration. While the exploit teams win in the short term, they sink the company in the long.

Image of Derek van Bever

Derek van Bever – The Capitalist’s Dilemma

It is a pleasure to welcome a great friend of Clay Christensen, yet another soul deeply touched by the man, the author of “Stall points” and author of the 2014 paper, The Capitalist’s Dilemma, Derek van Bever.

How Will You Measure Your Life? with Karen Dillon The Clay Christensen Tribute

Karen Dillon – How Will You Measure Your Life?

Karen Dillon joins us to share concepts from her book How Will You Measure you Life co-authored with her friend, Clay Christensen

Image of Michael Horn

Michael B. Horn – Disrupting Class

Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn’s “Disrupting Class” is an unsettling title for a book about the schooling process.
The title conveys multiple meanings.
The principal message is that disruption can usefully frame why schools have struggled to improve and how to solve these problems.

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