Life Lessons - Chapter 1 - Business Humanity

Prologue: Dusk begins to take hold. I have work to do...

By Trade (and by Personality), I am what one might describe as a Counter puncher. That means I rarely initiate without Listening first. Then I react to what I hear, see and feel. My belief system dictates that I respond only after I’ve witnessed the environment I am dealing with. For me, any other approach is generally stupid and ill-conceived. You’d know that from all the junk I’ve written previously around The Fine Art of Listening.

So, that said, what you have here are responses to stuff others have said and written and my reaction to each:

Strategic planning is "just" analysis - no room for intuition and creativity.

“One of the strongest prejudices towards strategic planning is that it solely relies on analysis and limits any creativity/intuition. It is not "strategic thinking". In a recent paper (accepted for publication in Public Management Review), we found that this prejudice is simply incorrect. Specifically, planning team members with a creating cognitive style are more likely to accept the strategic planning process and be committed to the implementation of the strategic plan.”

To that, I say: Hurray! Expanding, I believe creativity and intuition should be a (large, huge) part of everything you do in life. Conversely, parsing out an element of business activity (read Strategic Planning) from other activities as purely analytical and unimaginative makes no sense and I believe is contrary to the way truly great organizations become valued as great places to be associated with. From beginning to end...from Process to Implementation.

Auto Consulting - AI vs. Consultants : a love hate tale ?

The observation has been made that Client organizations are driven by the way they are structured physically and environmentally. So, it goes, AI has threatened the Consulting Trade through modeling these variables and applying algorithms to arrive at solutions that historically have been within the realm of Consultancy.

What my experience shows: Let's see...there was the proposition at the start that: "99% of the solution to any challenge is hidden in the client's organization and ecosystem." Sounds good, but that's not real root cause, is it? I would much rather dig deeper at Leadership and their responsibility in creating that organization and ecosystem. That said, I am willing to accept that the solution (for better or worse) could be driven from other than the top, though this happens pretty rarely these days.

As to AI...there is no substitute for human interaction. A consultant worth her/his weight, knows this. Don't fear AI...sell your value. Client Companies which experience that value always appreciate the care and interest once practiced. Further, best to actually work the model before trumpeting the model's contents. Your practical experience will be illuminating for you!

To Growth Strategies as the end-all to successful business models, I said:

Hmmm, might be important to remind that the imperative that growth is good, that bigger is better is really not an imperative after all. The outcomes in a growth environment are, at times, wasteful, gluttonous and abusive. The growth strategy is a valid one only WHEN the possible adverse impacts of growth are fully vetted and allowances made.

To the values of humility and care in the workplace being overblown, I said:

For many folks, it's been said that it's wise to keep business and pleasure separate. After decades of an evolving value set, I have reached the conclusion that there should be little to distinguish how you do your business opposed to how you do your non-business. This so particularly around human behavioral qualities. So if, for example, you think humility is a quality worth practicing away from work, I would say why in the heck would you not practice the same in the workplace? Enough of money mongering, smash mouth, in your face, bully, mentality business practice. Humility and Care are important regardless of where you practice them.

More Later and with Warm Regards, Don’t forget to shop @ www.mdhconsult.com !

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