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Dear readers,
We’re happy to share with you that we’re resuming the development of our practical guides aimed at helping people tackle together the difficult, complex challenges that they face.
To mark the occasion, we’ve created the “autumn” discount code that you can use till the end of November (which will give you 10% off any of the guides).
The Owtcome team has created a new strategic tool that you might find useful. Highlights ours:
In the face of uncertainty and disruption, strategic tools need a remake to be reliable guides in helping us interpret new contexts and unfamiliar challenges.
(…) SWOT quickly gained popularity as a simple tool used for organizational analysis to communicate the strategy. As a high-level overview, many rely on it to create a shared understanding. But there is a limit: SWOT is there to justify the direction, not set the course of action.
Meta-SWOT Forget for a moment the current layout and four sections and think about them as building blocks that can shift positions. Now, SWOT is no longer a static form but a dynamic platform for strategic insights.
(…) Classical SWOT analysis is limited to prioritizing elements. But Meta-SWOT focuses on the relationship between them. The conversation is open and goes beyond the scope of the few elements to draw a more coherent story around the brand and disruption. The result is a powerful narrative and an execution path based on insights.
Can you recognize sabotage at work, when you see it?
#study
People as Neurons of Networks
The best food for thought we came across recently is written by Tomas Pueyo (highlights ours):
(…) Quarks interact with each other to form atoms. Atoms interact with each other to form molecules. Molecules interact with each other to form cells. Cells interact with each other to form bodies. Bodies interact with each other to form societies. Societies…
This is fractal. Lower-level elements combine and interact, and from that emerges a more complex behavior at higher levels.
Which begs the question: are you just a body, or also the cell of a body?
(…) Think about it. You get information inputs from journalists, from friends, from those you follow, from the websites you visit, the shows you watch, the conversations you participate on… You then process that information, by either thinking or intuition. And you output your own information signal by talking, writing, drawing… Others then go on and consume your output, to form their own thoughts, and create their own output.
(…) You’re also a neuron for your company whenever you do knowledge work in it.
Each person is a neuron in this brain. You bring information from outside and from inside of the company, process it in your individual work, and communicate it back with your deliverables. In the process, you coordinate with many other neurons—people. Each meeting can be seen as a group of neurons lighting together, exchanging information.
Your dendrites (your sources of information) go to all the people you hang out with or meet. Your work network. Your axones (the channel with information you send out) go to all the people you share information with—which might not always be the same group.
Through these processes emerge the big decisions that companies make: what other companies to buy, what strategy to follow, how to spend their money, who to hire (=what neurons to add to the network), their product design, their marketing…
Why not take a few seconds to forward it to someone who might enjoy it as well?
See you again in two weeks ✌️
This newsletter is curated by Raluca and Bülent Duagi, the Sense & Change team.
As Strategy & Organization professionals, we're partnering with visionary Tech companies to help them address their most complex strategic & organizational challenges.
Our professional mission and intended legacy is:
Creating and sharing sustainable knowledge that helps people deal with the complex challenges they (will) face.
What an amazing edition. So much to take-away. Thank you very much for sharing this. You are awesome.