I get vertigo. 30 years ago I stood up at a flip chart, drew a 'something' on the paper and waited to be laughed out of the room. What happened next took 30 years to evolve and I'm still learning every single time I do it.

Nobody laughed. In fact they did nothing. They seemed to have been shocked into stillness. What I had done was an act of sheer frustration. I couldn't carry on listening to the crazy random stupid circular conversation a minute longer. I was certain that they regretted asking me, an idiot, to the meeting. I was on the edge.

Initially I wondered if it was impolite to stand up in these meetings. Then I felt the full spotlight of 'What on Earth is he doing?'. Then I swore because the pens were next to useless - then it became clear that although it wasn't the 'done thing' it had at least brought the madness to a stop. I asked some simple questions for my clarification - like Why and How? - I drew a bit more on the paper. I stopped. I sat down. It was a bit odd.

I broke the stunned silence by explaining the sketch (as if they couldn't see the plainness of it). I said it was merely a device for me (at least) to understand what I thought they were all trying to say.

To a man (yes they were all men) they stood up and said that's it! Brilliant - let's all agree to that and 'John - can you get someone to take a photograph and send a print to everyone?' To be truthful I've no recollection of how it got shared. Telex, carrier pigeon.

And that was it.

I didn't realise then what the significance of it all was but it stuck with me. I became a guest at a million meetings. "John will you do that thing you do at the flip chart while we jabber aimlessly about completely worthless stuff and drink god awful coffee?"

I did for a while and then insisted that the the firm bought decent pens (and decent coffee). I ended up keeping my own pens. Then I bought better paper than the stuff that they use on flip charts. Then I thought 'What am I doing?' and insisted they stopped these meetings. Sadly that didn't work.

Then I left that company to do something else. In fact I wanted to get back into the creative industry so I bought a creative business in London and proceeded to have 10 years of not being creative at all. I became a 'leader' and somehow got consumed by all the crap that went with that.

I was the one holding stupid meetings and nobody was holding the pens.

I started to get annoyed. So instead of doing the traditional creative industry pitch - all gong and no dinner - I went back to the pens. I started asking the sort of questions that I asked back at the flip chart of the folks in those meetings. 'What actually matters guys?' Only now it was with paying clients. Cheeky Monkey.

So where did all this get me? Well I'm in Thailand looking at the journey so far and thinking that it was the right thing to do. To never give in by accepting that thinking and being creative is what we did when we were kids. That's rubbish. In business there's always challenges and opportunities. By bringing creativity and visual colour to the most important conversations a business can have is where it's at for me. The question was 'Where will what we do go next?'

5 Things:

You know - looking and seeing. Thinking and imagining. Observing. Paying attention. Engaging with what's going on. There's a lot driving things these days - the need for change or a hunch that something could be valuable if we all just thought about it more. Come on guys!

Having immersed ourselves in all the bits - the endless moving parts and dynamics of today's business - can we make better sense of it and put it in a way that inspires everyone? Everyone by the way means both inside and outside the enterprise. Inspires means just that - make it engaging, meaningful and thrilling to do the work.

It's no longer acceptable to spend months planning and strategising. What's important is making it happen. Getting a consciousness in the people and an appetite for doing the work. Having people continuously learning what's happening as it all shifts - and always being 'on their game'. Getting the work done IS the strategy.

This perpetual and dynamic change is the new business as usual.

Let's stop with the short term and long term binary stuff. Being prepared always connected and alive to what's happening as it bangs up against perpetual change - that's how it is. We have a direction and let's just make sure we are alwasy on that. Whatever it takes. Collaborating, always in conversation and sharing the lessons of what's actually happening - always.

Identifying what doesn't matter is no walk in the park.

This is where people hold on tight. Their minds don't freely dislodge long held traditions - even in the face of powerful reasoning. Let's call that culture and behaviour. Stopping what doesn't matter is a whole other level when it comes to operations. Millions of dollars have been invested in processes and systems that worked one way and now we want to dynamite under it. Yep. Let's call that the new imperative.

And what's worse, what's stopping you from stopping? A lot. The truth is this is deeply insidious stuff and unique in each case. Getting to the truth of why and what is hard because it requires the unwiring of almost everything we've come to know and love.

So we are creating tools and techniques that unpick the hard wired and dismantle the long tired. I still get vertigo. (Yes I know that's the wrong word!)

The Rest Of The Story - http://beta.myalbum.com/artofstrategy