I came across an article by George Monbiot (24/10/2019 see link below) which looks at the difference between representative democracy and participatory democracy – these could be analogues for top-down management and staff engagement. Few firms now would advocate that top-down management is effective (though it may be necessary in times of crisis or other stressor). Rather firms look to involve their staff in terms of innovation, speedy change and even to adapt strategy in a changing environment.…

Perhaps metaphors work through a symbolic representation – if I say ‘tree’, you have an image of a tree in your mind, if I say tree roots this is more difficult as we do not typically see the root system within the Earth.…

If we consider the frameworks that we have in our strategy toolkit they are valuable but how do we use them? We get the outline of a framework e.g. Porter’s Five Forces and we fill in the boxes with data and call it analysis. By analogy, it can feel like those books which are popular at the moment: adult colouring-in books. Are we just following the lines drawn for us by the framework - it can appear to be analysis but does it actually reflect reality, if the ‘picture’ is already drawn for us?…