by Phil Jones | Updated 4 Jan, 2018 | Behavioural & cultural change, Organisations are Social systems, Thought provokers
What is your people model? I hear lots of talk about an organisation’s business model, or their operating model, or their service delivery model. It is a core part of what I do, understanding how the business, operation, or service is going to deliver and make...
by Phil Jones | Updated 4 Jan, 2018 | Culture of performance, Organisations are Social systems, Thought provokers
OK, I can hear the squeals of anguish and dissent. “Of course organisational structures exist” I hear people say. We have organisations and we create structures and we do organisational design to place people within those structures. We spend time and...
by Phil Jones | Updated 17 Oct, 2017 | A Modern System of Management, Thought provokers
I am quite interested in the psychology of management because I think we tend to adopt psychological models of how management works, and how change happens, without necessarily questioning their assumptions and continued validity, or applicability. I also find that...
by Phil Jones | Updated 19 Dec, 2018 | Behavioural & cultural change, Culture of performance, Thought provokers
I was working with a client who, like many organisations, was getting tangled up in definitions of purpose and mission. What it revelaed was the importance of ‘Meaning’ at work, and meaningful work, today. This article untangles purpose and mission, but...
by Phil Jones | Updated 4 Sep, 2023 | 4G Balanced Scorecard, Strategy implementation, Thought provokers
In this article we look at a really common statistic that was popularised with Norton & Kaplan’s approach: the “statistic” that 9 out of 10 of business strategies fail due to poor execution. Now, I have never believed it. It is attributed to...
by Phil Jones | Updated 7 Jul, 2017 | Behavioural & cultural change, Strategy, Thought provokers
You have probably heard the expression, either as “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” or “Culture eats strategy for lunch”. In essence what they are saying is that the culture of the organisation is stronger than the strategy and the planned...
by Phil Jones | Updated 20 Oct, 2017 | Strategy communication, Thought provokers
Ever sat in an organisation wondering about the nicely framed values and mission statements on the walls. Welcome to “The ten thousand and six words problem”. Just about every organisation has them, on their walls, in their corporate brochures and on...
by Phil Jones | Updated 24 Oct, 2017 | A Modern System of Management, Agile & learning organisations, Thought provokers
What role do, and should, our management systems play in protecting from, and connecting our organisations to, the volatility and uncertainty of the outside world? At a recent management presentation I suggested that the way we manage is designed to absorb friction. ...
by Phil Jones | Updated 17 Oct, 2017 | A Modern System of Management, Agile & learning organisations, Thought provokers
Treat this as an off the wall, whimsical post – with a serious intent…. One thing that we all see far too much of – Management. One problem with many organisations is that we spend too much time managing, we create too many rules and practices and...