Posts by Ed Morrison
Leadership in a crisis: Think coherence
Here’s an exceptionally good article on leadership in a crisis. We’ve seen this emerging trend for some time: in an era of growing complexity, coherence is more important than vision. We are seeing lessons in this pandemic, as we move closer to the edge, toward chaos and loss of meaning. The leaders who inspire us…
Read MoreSeeing Our Economy with New Eyes
The coronavirus can teach us a lot about the true nature of our economy. The most important lesson: for decades, we’ve fundamentally misunderstood how our economy works. Our economic policy has been driven by neoclassical economics. The basic idea: you have a government, and you have the private sector. Their interests diverge. For a prosperous…
Read MoreUniversities Need a Redesign
Our universities need a redesign. The good news: the changes are not dramatic, and they can be managed. The bad news: those that do not change will be disrupted. Christensen warned us. (https://amzn.to/2vw484E) The needed changes go beyond cost-cutting. It’s a mind shift, a deep embrace of multidisciplinary approaches to complex, “wicked” challenges. This shift…
Read MoreUnderstanding Agility in Business: Use the S Curve
We continue to define the term “strategic agility” more rigorously. Following an S-Curve framework, there are 5 critical strategic focus areas an enterprise must manage. (I corrected the image. You can download a PDF here: http://bit.ly/2u5WtJH) Recombinant Innovation: Creating new value by linking and leveraging existing assets both inside and outside the organization. Knowledge assets…
Read MoreMeanwhile, in Shanghai…
Who knew? Our book is in some fine company in Shanghai. We are listed as the Number 4 most popular business book by Shanghai Daily. Our favorite on the list: Amy Edmondson’s The Fearless Organization. We are grateful to our colleagues who supported our work through the years; all those who contributed positive reviews; the…
Read MoreStrategy is….
Strategy is like software. If you can’t get your ideas off the whiteboard, they have little value. If you can’t test your thinking with practical experiments, you will never learn. If you keep talking and don’t do anything, you’re in the same place you were yesterday and falling behind; the world is moving and you’re…
Read MoreBreaking the Grip of Silos
In a world in which networks create knowledge and value, leadership involves designing and guiding these networks. In most hierarchical organizations, the task involves breaking the grip of silos by strengthening networks. We’ve learned to distinguish among three types of networks: affinity networks (or interested communities), learning networks (or communities of practice) and innovating networks.…
Read MoreFostering Collaboration on a Local Level
Jacob Moses and I explore how city leaders can grow their economies by fostering collaboration on a local level, including how to find existing assets in your community, how to encourage existing organizations to focus on a shared goal, and how to move forward by relentlessly focusing on “doing the doable”.
Read MorePodcast for Economic and Community Developers
A few weeks ago, I spent some time with Dennis Fraise of Develop This!, a podcast for economic and community developers. In this first podcast, I start by providing some background on the development of the Agile Strategy Lab at Purdue. The Lab is the place at Purdue where people learn the skills to address…
Read MoreThree Hurdles to Digital Transformation
To transform our organizations and economies to higher levels of productivity, prosperity and sustainability, we need to design new systems from the assets of the old. That requires collaboration, a set of skills with which most leaders are unfamiliar. It stands to reason. Today’s leaders came of age within organizations designed for an industrial age.…
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