Planning, Strategy, and Context: your people matter.

As you may know, I am studying for my Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership, at Brandman University.  Today in my Strategic Planning class we had a great webinar.  One of the best features of this program is continuously tying our learning content to our change project, and our research efforts.  It is what make this program exceedingly practical, and results-driven.

So our discussion was about understanding strategy, and developing awareness of roadblocks to strategic planning.  Two huge considerations are methodology for planning, and the planning context.  First thing to note is they relate to each other.  Your context will dictate how you plan, so this is one of the first discussion to have with the planning team.

Organization Theory, Leadership Theory, Management Theory; who’s right or is it all Bull$#!t?

Recently I had an assignment in my Organizational Theory and Development class.  The essence of the question was what is a more accurate description of Organization Development: has it evolved or is it just adopting every fad that comes along.  I keep seeing this binary thinking rear its ugly head in business and leadership thought frequently: leaders are good/managers bad, servant leadership is the only way to lead, appreciative inquiry only because criticism is wrong.

It’s relatively easy to take a position and adhere to it.  We do it almost viscerally.  But it can stunt our intellectual growth.  We live in a world of practicalities, of getting things done, informed by a certain disdain for theory, and academic thinking.  Heck we ridicule education.  So we are not likely to deeply examine how we understand what we understand.  Theory bores us.