A few years ago a friend of mine asked me if I had any thoughts about a leadership team restructure he was contemplating. Instinctively I knew that I must have thoughts, after all, I’ve dedicated a big chunk of my 15-year professional career to helping executives set their strategies. Surely I must have some pithy advice on how to put those executives together into some kind of coherent order? But I was stumped. And it turned out that I wasn’t alone. A magical mystery tour through my smartest colleagues turned up a few rules of thumb, but little in the way of theory. So I did what all management consultants do and turned to Google and HBR. Here again, I drew a blank. Although I found many interesting articles and opinions about aspects of executive leadership and governance, I failed to turn up anything seminal about structure and practices. Hell, I failed to turn up anything conceptual, let alone Executive Team Configuration For Dummies. That was late 2018. After a short intermission ...
Thoughts on strategy in a Digital Economy