Just over a decade ago, my then business partner Tim Morley and I were looking at the business world and saw that there were only a few typical ‘symptoms’ of problems that we tried to address. Many of those symptoms seem very much alive today as well. We noticed that most businesses feel the need…
In this -slightly longer- post, we will discuss a special type of business: family firms. This blog idea was triggered by a blog posting from David Oxley on business change in family businesses (11th July 2017) and a consequent correspondence we had on this. I would like to build on his thinking on business change…
Many projects are started, usually, to address some form of perceived issue. The imperative seems to be that a certain way of working, a business process, an IT solution –and so on- should be changed in some form to improve what is being done to meet the business’ strategic goals. Usually there is an…
Consultants tend to be hired because of their expected content knowledge and extensive experience in tackling specific challenges, similar to the ones the client faces. Therefore, there is an inherent tension between the experience of the consultant helping the client, and the experience of the client themselves. Of course, consultants have proven models and methodologies that codify…
In the more than 20 years that I have been working with my clients I noticed that traditional management theory, much fuelled by and taught in the many global MBA courses, seemed to suggest that by applying certain pre-defined practices we can “be in control” of our organisations. Determine the outcome of the whole of what…