Conventional thinking

"And remember, it's a collective devotion to conventional thinking that send organisations over the cliff of irrelevance."

Gary Hamel

Three reflections on conventional thinking:

If you're a leader who is benefiting from operating a control based hierarchical system, then you're probably not interested in ways to operate a less control based hierarchical system.

If your vendor commercial model - or internal 'L&D strategy' - relies on training as the 'solution', it's unlikely you'll be interested in acknowledging organisations as complex, connected systems. As Clay Shirky one wrote, 'institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.'

The underpinning magical idea in the industrial, commercial 'L&D' model (including 'learning technology' vendors, conferences, awards programs, consulting, 'maturity models', podcasts etc. etc.) is that we can 'fix L&D' whilst everything around it stays the same. (And, expect different results...).


I work as a thinking partner and advisor with mid sized, value oriented companies going through significant change. I help you to build new capability and mindsets through shifting your approach to organisational development.

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