Clients sometimes ask during downtime: ‘so what’s the current trend at the moment…what’s the latest?’

With shelves bending with business reading, you could be scrambling for an answer. In reality, they’re often re-hashing, re-labeling and re-selling the same concepts and models but with new price tags and perhaps a measurement tool or two which suggests quantifiable results.

In reality, perhaps looking for the next big thing or adopting the flavour of the quarter can be a way of postponing the work that we know needs to be done, or avoiding the simple questions, but those that would have the most profound change. Clayton Christensen, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School perhaps says it best:
“do we have the courage to do this?”

In my experience it’s more about having the conversations we need to, sometimes around the topics we avoid but in a facilitator directed, consultative space.

“What is really hard for us to do is to look down at the bottom of the market and see a business model coming at us – which is, we don’t need MBA’s anymore.”  Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School