Simon Says: You are not at the mercy of uncertainty
The negative impacts of uncertainty on organisational performance are well documented. Uncertainty has been shown to: To be honest, it feels depressing just to write that out. But if you’re
Simon Says: Why some leaders stay operational instead of being strategic
This post is a reflection on a conversation I had recently with a local government client. Although the genesis of this post might have been the challenges faced by one
Simon Says: Can you see the bigger picture?
Although not technically part of the collaborative decision making framework, individual perception and the ability to see the bigger picture is still instrumental to good decision making. In fact, in
Simon says: Why a collective purpose is more useful than a vision statement
One of the most common mistakes when it comes to identifying collective purpose is that we confuse it with an organisation’s vision. Whereas an organisation’s vision is an ‘idealistic view
Simon Says: I’m at your service
December and January are generally quiet months for consultancy types like me. I’m quite happy with that. I get to spend time with my two girls while they’re still young
Simon Says: When There Are Too Many ‘I’s in a Team
In last week’s post, I dove into the idea of the ‘Olympic Year’ and how we can use metaphor to gain deeper insights and uncover new opportunities. One of the
Doing strategy isn’t the same as being strategic
This post was inspired by an exchange I had recently with a client of mine, Rob Cornish. Rob shared with me a post he’d recently written, and in it he
Who currently gets to do strategy (and who else should you invite)?
Who’s in charge of strategy at your organisation? And who get’s invited to participate? For most organisations the list of people who get invited to strategic conversations is a fairly
Is ‘buy-in’ enough?
At various times we’ve all wanted other people’s buy-in. We want to get stakeholders to buy into our agenda, staff to buy into our strategy, and our boss to buy
Why don’t we just replace our councillors with a board of directors?
Last week I posted on LinkedIn asking whether local councillors should be replaced with a board of directors. Just to be clear, this isn’t my idea, but it’s something I
