What is Strategic Agility? There’s ample evidence that, no matter how much analysis and planning is done, strategic planning is inherently flawed, quickly out of date, and rendered ineffective due to slow and incomplete execution. This post gives examples as well as an overview of three consultant perspectives highlighting principles of strategic agility and execution including tactical choices for competitive advantage.

Scott Wachtmann, who recently completed a non-traditional high school and higher education course of study, guest authors this post with a fresh view into education. If you are in higher education or are facing high school and college education choices for yourself or have children who are, you may find his story compelling as well as informative. Scott shares links and resources as well as his story.

Are your goals strategic? This is the third of three posts in the MCG series focused on the goal stage, after “membership” and “control.” At this stage, teams are fully fit and ready to act, if there is a commonly understood goal and a plan to achieve it. As some leaders struggle in defining clear and strategic goals, tools and approaches are offered.

People don’t resist changes, they resist being controlled… The second of of the MCG series in helping leaders and teams develop skill in order to meet changing goals. Also includes “change AND die,” the Leadership Control model, and “resistance is a resource” references.

“A good leader inspires people to have confidence in their leader. A great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” — Anon

As teams change, status and role questions arise.  Roles shift, people leave for various reasons, e.g. the group churns.  This post is about team shift, today focusing on MEMBERSHIP – the first [...]

“Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.” Work/life balance post including research on happiness, and local delights of the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market, including Pilar’s tamale lunch special.

Power, pride, status. How about integrity? Status can be a distraction, an illusion. This post features a list of the signs of organization leadership that form spine and integrity, as I’ve observed over the years, with live links to the top leadership blogs up for

There’s comfort in friendship and community. There can also be blind spots and status quo problems inherent in comfort-based systems, sometimes tragically so, when the blind spots are very large.

I could wax forth on a recent faculty group’s success this month with SWOT analysis (see Tools.)  I could mention the success and angst of retreat design (see Tools, retreat process.)   Instead, here’s a somewhat sentimental blog post on the positive aspects of the pain of change, at times overwhelming,
full of sighs, groans, and [...]

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect…
–E.M. Forster, Howards End
Forster characters illustrate the tensions and challenge of making connections among different social classes in the period that preceded the [...]