Author: Shaun Coffey

Shaun Coffey is interested in future making and institutional building. He is an agricultural scientist who tries to integrate fragmented and sector-specific technical and scientific knowledge to address the wicked problems that characterise the real world.
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Seeking to be Creative? Listen with spirit

Wisdom, insight, change and action come not from better thinking, testing and strategising, but from letting go, receiving and listening.  

Group creativity appears to exhibit a common spirit revealing itself. The vehicle for receiving this insight or connecting with spirit, is a quality of detached, selfless openness. It is like emptying oneself or creating a vessel for receiving and containing spirit.  

Source:  Levine L (1994) Listening with spirit and the art of team dialogue. Journal of organisational change management. 7(1):61-73

 
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All business is a journey not a destination: Stop Planning and Start the Journey.

A business plan is a necessity for any business. It is the result of painstaking thought and analysis, translated into a strategy and action.

Many advisers will tell you, quite rightly, that simply having a plan is not the path to success. They will tell you that to execute your strategy you will need to be continually planning, and taking operational or tactical decisions as you are sure your objective. I’d like to suggest a different way of looking at this.

Continue reading “All business is a journey not a destination: Stop Planning and Start the Journey.”
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Management as a Wicked Problem | the problem space evolves as you progress into the solution space.

I have mulled over this post by Thierry de Baillon and Ralph Ohr for some time – see :  Business Model Innovation as Wicked Problem | Sonnez en cas d’absence

It highlights for me the importance need for managers to understand emergence and complexity. The article (and accompanying material) is well worth a thorough read – still an important contribution.

The post states:

An ever increasing pace of change leads to a decrease in life time of operating business models. Companies are therefore forced to reinvent themselves more frequently by creating new business models. Entering new businesses through open business model innovation exhibits a wicked problem structure. In order to properly address those problems, companies have to follow emergent strategies and need to put decentralized, self-organizing structures in place. Social business brings an answer to the urgent necessity to successfully tackle corporate reinvention and to enhance strategic adaptability by connecting individual human stakeholders.

A critical issues, as pointed out by Thierry de Baillon is that the problem space evolves as you progress into the solution space.

It is no longer appropriate to put a business model in place and follow it slavishly: rather it needs to be dynamic and adaptive to emerging trends/activities/reactions.


 

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Christopher Wren’s convictions, not his structural columns, support London

The noted English architect Sir Christopher Wren once built a structure in London.  His employers claimed that a certain span Wren planned was too wide, that he would need another row of columns for support.  Sir Christopher, after some discussion, acquiesced.  He added the row of columns, but he left a space between the unnecessary columns and the beams above.  The worthies of London could not see this space from the ground.  To this day, the beam has not sagged.  The columns still stand firm, supporting nothing but Wren’s conviction.  Leadership is much more than an art, a belief, a condition of heart, than a set of things to do.  The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice.

De Pree M O (1989)  Leadership is an Art.   Melbourne: Australian Business Library, Information Australia. pp.   135-136  

Think about it:  The visible signs of  leadership are expressed in its practice.