Agility requires constant organizational learning and institutionalizing those lessons learned, so that history has less chance of repeating itself, even if it is well disguised. Any time history remotely repeats itself, that is wheelspin by definition, which could have been avoided if we had more traction on continuous improvement and institutionalizing lessons learned. The nameless, rankless debrief can help you.
Achieving breakthroughs is hard work - by definition we are trying to create systemic solutions to systemic problems which don’t happen by accident. We are typically gridlocked with insufficient time, money and resources. To unlock the gridlock, we need to employ the principle of compound interest and the 1% solution.
A recurring and rigorous strategy conversation is about having options. The further up and out we expand the envelope of our strategy conversation then the more options we have – 
“up” in terms of the altitude of our strategic thinking/ conversation and “out” in terms of the time-horizon of our strategic thinking/conversation (Execution Excellence - missing in action?).
If Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford, can do it, you sure as heck can! Hold a morning meeting (or a daily huddle at some other time of day) that is. As reported in an article in this week’s BusinessWeek Magazine (Ford’s Savior, March 16th, 2009):
Does your team have what it takes to be a tiger? I love the series of advertisements Accenture has progressively created with Tiger Woods, which speak directly to our work.
These days, we must be comfortable being uncomfortable, expecting the unexpected and being ready, willing and able to manage things as they unfold.
In their 2007 book, "Managing the Unexpected – Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty", Karl Weick & Kathleen Sutcliffe put it this way:
We can easily veer off track of the journey to mastery of our organizational agility. There are 5 Dangerous Detours (with tragic consequences) and 10 Mental Modes Avoid Them, outlined in this category of blogs.
We can easily end up being half-brained, with too much empasis either left or right, each being bad news and a dangerous detour with potentially tragic consequences.
We can easily default to simplicity this side of complexity, which is bad news and a dangerous detour with potentially tragic consequences.
We can easily give into the presure of premature closure, which is bad news and a dangeous detour with potentially tragic consequences.
Like anything we offer, the key is a compelling value-proposition, Read the rest of this entry »
We can easily lapse into "either/or" propositions, which is bad news and a dangerous detour with potentially tragic cosnequences.
We can easily talk ourselves out of planning, which is bad news and a dangerous detour with potentially tragic consequences.
Execution Excellence: Missing-in-Action“We hear a lot about execution these days, which is encouraging. But strategy and execution are only as good as the traction they create and sustain, on a higher road of a breakthrough journey."
Mike's Own Journey“As an executive and then CEO of small-to-medium sized and fast-moving businesses, I experienced an ever increasing sense-of-void. As the pace of business and change accelerated, my experience of most coaches, consultants and trainers coming into my office offering to help was that they didn’t really understand the nature of the seat I sat in everyday..." read more...
See Mike giving one of his keynote speeches, Breaking Through to a New Future .