The weekly round up:
- Inventing the Future is Everybody’s Job – Increasingly, strategy and planning are moving out of the executive suite into a broader milieu for shaping directions. Why? “the world is just too complex, change comes too fast, and the challenges we face are too immense (and interconnected), for an insular clique of executives to chart the course of an organization from a blank sheet of paper and sheer brilliance” … is that the case in your business? What will you do about it?
- Cooperation vs Collaboration – An interesting viewpoint on the difference between collaboration (typified as an outcome of “collectives” – groups with a single purpose) and cooperation (an outcome of “connectives” – a less-formal grouping of people with individual but related purposes), and the potential interplay between the two.
- 7 Habits That Make Great Opportunities Happen – Some good ideas about how to “get lucky” … along the theme of preparation intersecting with opportunity, and a few things you can do to assist that
- Why Exception Handling Should be the Rule – Handling repeatable processes is now table stakes – if you’re a sizeable company and can’t handle the bulk of your business value transactions “automatically” with a standard (probably automated) process, you won’t stay in business for long.
Where the differentiation comes is in handling exceptions to the “standard” process. These shouldn’t be seen as problems – they are often an opportunity to really put yourself ahead of competitors in the eyes of the customer … so it’s worth thinking about how to accommodate exceptions better.
- Why corporate blogging is like selling uncut cocaine – Something of a sensationalist title perhaps, but it makes the point that getting your message out via third-parties (while still useful in some distribution channels) is diluting your company’s story … and increasingly consumers want to hear it “from the horse’s mouth”.