A recent meeting participant suggested that short workshops are the only way a group can get meaningful discussion happening. By extension, they perceive that long workshops are simply show-and-tell sessions. May experience says that they’ve been railroaded in the past, and are being misguided today.
Models are important, in that they help us to understand the world and create meaning from fuzziness. At the same time, fuzziness is where opportunities lie. Models can help make meaning, but we shouldn’t demand too much of them.
Few people in the world of business would dare to make the claim that they aren’t strategic. It’s viewed as a necessary capability. But one of the problems with the whole concept of being strategic, unfortunately, is that we’re not entirely sure what it means.
When we are looking for help, we often take a blinkered view, looking for specific boundaries and industry experience. That’s great for an operational role. Strategy development is a different animal. Different criteria can result in an entirely different level of effectiveness.