So we went and applied our own 'techniques and tools' to ourselves. What were we thinking? And we did it in Thailand. That's because typically we tend to travel West. We wondered what would happen if we went East. It was - different.

As the week evolved, and started to make more sense, several things occurred to us. We know what we do is powerful and highly valued but it often ends up being compromised by the very business it's trying to help. We felt that it was time to do something about it. And that raised some bigger questions.

We had been thinking about the challenge for a while - What would Group Partners be in 2020? More interestingly what 'could' we be in 2020? And to begin with why would we even deserve to be around in 2020? That's a great way to think for a host of reasons. Mostly because ours is a crowded category. A bazillion people/businesses will tell you that they're able to solve this that or the other thing. They may well be able to but we've been clients ourselves and bitten badly.

So what's our difference?

We've got no interest in the outcome - other than the best result for the client. We've applied our frame-working philosophy many times across a myriad industries and countless exam questions. We try to transfer confidence in the result of our work to our clients so they can carry it forward and not create a dependency on us. We work at real pace which means we're working at the same rhythm as the world around us. Our frameworks are living systems.

We do a large amount of our work visually - we do it with structure - and we add creativity and empathy to all of this.

We can't just accept that that's just the way it is. We can't go through these massive efforts and stand by and watch it all dissipate. We can't expect our clients to work with us for a few weeks and think that they can sustain the complex nature of what's required.

And we can't make the classic error of creating a dependency on us as the convenient answer to it all.

Much of the problem lies in the defensive and inflexible 'business as usual' mentality that exists in every business. And that's at every level - the C suite, the senior managers and on into the enterprise itself. Translating how important the new strategy is doesn't get executed with the required passion - a passion that's non optional. The stuff that gets in the way gets in the way. It mustn't.

If the new strategy is to survive then the energy to make it work has to be bigger than the resistance of it.

New strategies don't receive the leadership attention they require. They fail because they don't survive the many waves of determination it takes to crush the legacy positions that exist in the business. Nowhere near enough attention is paid to the 'framework' of what needs to STOP as we build out the framework of what needs to START.

All of this isn't to blame anyone in particular but to recognise what most of us already know. And also to announce that we will be spending a much larger percentage of our time on this topic. This phenomena affects every business, large and small, new and old. It affects Governments, NGO's public and private. It is killing enterprise wherever it exists and in every single geography on the planet.

We've started to discuss our approach to dealing with it with the more enlightened leadership teams. See the Album called Extreme Stopping. http://beta.myalbum.com/album/A3VCJinWVdZ3 These advanced thinkers already understand that it's a fundamental reason why change and transformation just isn't working in the vast majority of cases.

We are determined to make our difference make a difference.

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