Sherpa Alliance

• " We’re heading into a world characterized by big events, big forces, and massive storms. We’re going to be vulnerable little specks high on the mountain when the storm hits out of nowhere. And if we’re not prepared, we’re going to die up there. Or we’re going to be in real serious trouble.  We need to understand what separates those who do well from those who don’t do well when the world spins completely out of our control. We just finished six years of what we call our turbulence research".
• "We are now, I think, having to adjust to dealing with a world that is going to be ferocious. We don’t have any practice with that.  What I’ve learned from the turbulence research has already started to affect my life. I’ve become a total paranoid, neurotic freak. It has shown me the importance of building in big shock absorbers".

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Fast-cycle teamwork is at the core of our organizational agility, for which we need to rev-up the frequency of our communication, collaboration and coordination as a team.  Here is a downloadable article, which you can also share with your team to explain as part of applying these ideas:  Fast-Cycle Teamwork - what can we learn from fighter pilots?

Change has changed.  The nature of change itself has changed.  It has become much more like a dynamic journey on a shifting landscape.  We need to be putting on our 3-D glasses for our 3-D challenge.

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“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures”, says Daniel Pink in his book, “A Whole New Mind – moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age”.  Read the rest of this entry »

Agility doesn’t happen by accident, it happens by design.  We might be tempted to think that “keeping things loose, unstructured and organic around here” is the best way to be agile.  Wrong, unless a chaotic stampede is what you are looking for.   We can’t afford for things to be too loose, unstructured and organic if we want agility.  We also can’t afford for things to be too tight, structured and inorganic/rigid either if we want agility.  It’s an “and” proposition of loose and tight, structured and unstructured, organic and rigid and many other “and” propositions in the mix Read the rest of this entry »

While "beginning with the end in mind" is still a good idea, developing the advantage of organizational agility these days also demands a willingness to get going in the dark, letting the sun rise on the path.

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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.

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Remember the last time you experienced the benefits of organizational agility – your ability to cope with rapidly changing circumstances and navigate around avoidable-costs and opportunity-costs – think about where that agility came from.  Read the rest of this entry »

The OODA Loop is the essence of how fighter pilots are trained.  It captures the idea of a never ending loop of Observing, Orienting, Deciding and Acting.  Pilots are trained, trained again and trained some more, to master the detail complexity and dynamic complexity (see:  change has changed) of piloting a fighter jet, to have a smaller OODA Loop than their adversary.  In that way, their OODA Loop can operate inside their adversary’s OODA Loop , outmaneuvering them and winning the dogfight. 

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For organizational agility we need luck on our side. If, as the saying goes, “luck is where preparation meets opportunity” then an ongoing strategy process is about the “preparation” part of that and being ever prepared. As others have said: Read the rest of this entry »

So what do we mean by “dynamic complexity”?

In his 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge said:

"There are two types of complexity – detail complexity and dynamic complexity. The real leverage in most management situations lies in understanding dynamic complexity not detail complexity”

He goes on to say:

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“Keep it simple stupid” can be the KISS of death.  Here’s why, as captured by one of my favorite quotes:

"I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity but I’d give my life for simplicity on the far side of complexity” (Oliver Wendell Holmes).

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How much time, energy, attention, paperwork, systems and, above all else, discipline do we invest in the financial accounting of our businesses?  A lot.  And by comparison, how much do we invest in the “strategic accounting” of our business?  (The Financial Accounting vs "Strategic Accounting" of your Business) Or are we paying some degree of lip service to it instead?  In my experience, it’s a strategy tragedy, which could cause a kind of Eastern Airlines tragedy (see:  Divergence and Convergence) with your business.

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The ability to navigating a middle road of divergence and convergence Is increasingly essential these days. It’s a key “and” we have to master (see: Mastering the Challenge of the “and”) in the face of the changing nature of change (see: Change Has Changed).

It’s about our thinking, questions, decision and actions (see Strate’gems article: Read the rest of this entry »

Life used to be slow enough for “or” propositions to be OK – it was OK to be operational or strategic, short-term or long-term and leader or a manager.  Not any more.  Life has become too fast moving for that and the pace of change is accelerating all the time (see:  Change Has Changed).  Now we have to master “and” propositions, being strategic  and operational, short-term and long-term oriented, a leader and a manager all at the same time.   Read the rest of this entry »

The nature of change itself has changed.  It has become much more like a dynamic journey on a shifting landscape. 

In his 1999 book, Birth of the Chaordic Age, Dee Hock puts it this way:

“Fasten your seatbelts. The turbulence has scarcely begun. With accelerating speed, we’ve transcended boundary after boundary of diversity and complexity. The past is ever less predictive; the future is ever less predictable and the present scarcely exists at all”.

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