“Whenever smart and well-intentioned people avoid confronting obstacles, they disempower employees and undermine change.”― John Kotter “Since the strength of the chain is determined by the weakest link, then the first step to improve an organisation must be to identify the weakest link.”― Eliyahu Goldratt [TL;DR In the world of strategy and innovation, the key to success […]

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” — John Kenneth Galbraith In a 1994 study by Hollyn Johnson and Colleen Seifert, researchers led participants to believe that flammable materials caused a warehouse fire. Even after being informed that this

“Change and innovation in human endeavours follow adaptive evolutionary mechanisms akin to change and innovations in biological nature. Evolutionary mechanisms describe the brutal reality of how hard it is to change and innovate or even survive in nature and culture, not in the narrow sense of the culture of an organisation, but human endeavour broadly.

“Deep in most of us, below our awareness, indelibly implanted there by three centuries of the industrial age, is the mechanistic, separatist, cause-and-effect, command-and-control, machine model of reality. If you do not think your internal model of reality is not largely based on the machine as metaphor, carefully keep track of every thought and every

“Once a detective decides that he or she has found the killer, the confirmation bias sees to it that the prime suspect becomes the only suspect. And once that happens. an innocent defendant is on the ropes… Doubt is not the enemy of justice; overconfidence is…True scientists speak in the careful language of probability.” — Carol Tavris

“The hardest part of these decisions was neither the technological nor economic transformations required. It was changing the culture — the mindset and instincts of hundreds of thousands of people who had grown up in an undeniably successful company, but one that had for decades been immune to normal competitive and economic forces. The challenge was making

“People thought it was a document staring into the future. But it was a culture document and it was just about trying to create the conditions for people to stop saying no to change.” — A. G. Sulzberger, Chairman of The New York Times Company (2024 Reuters Memorial Lecture.) In 2014, The New York Times found itself

For Paid Substack Subscribers, we have a live session coming soon with Tony Ulwick, a pioneer of the Jobs-to-be-Done Theory and the inventor of Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI), a powerful strategy and innovation process with a documented success rate that is 5-times the industry average. Tony will join us in a small group and answer any

Yogi Berra famously quipped, “Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.”This rings especially true in today’s dynamic business landscape, where innovation cycles are shorter and more unpredictable than ever. The traditional bell curve, popularized by Everett Rogers, which mapped product adoption through distinct segments like innovators and laggards, is no longer enough. Enter the Shark Fin.

“Organisations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.” ~ Theodore Levitt Established organisations are structured for repeatability and reliability, conditions under which sparking innovation can be especially difficult. This structure was perhaps suitable when business environments were more stable. Yet, managing a business amidst today’s high