The scene is set in a dimly lit, high-tech ‘Syntegrity’ room in March 2026. The walls are covered in flickering holographic telemetry feeds from the Persian Gulf. Stafford Beer is adjusting a complex set of dials on a terminal; Ross Ashby is staring intently at a physical Homeostat machine clicking in the corner; Russell Ackoff is sketching interlocking circles on a digital whiteboard; and Peter Checkland is leaning back in a wooden chair, clutching a sketchbook filled with "

The Setting: Three historical characters appear in an ethereal ‘void’ overlooking a holographic representation of the present-day Middle East. Sun Tzu sits calmly contemplating a ‘Go’ board; Thucydides leans against a marble plinth, watching the news ticker; Carl von Clausewitz paces, clutching a battered copy of Vom Kriege. Clausewitz: (Pointing at the holographic map) “Look at this friction! They strike Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Syria, yet the political objective remai

News media reported this morning that two people have been killed in Oman by a drone. This angle on human tragedy misses the point; it’s focused on the use of drone munitions rather than the spread of the Middle East conflict to the civilian population of a neighbouring country. It seems that headline writers love a drone. In fact, it seems that an ever-growing community of interest loves a drone. A 2022 article published by the BBC by an eminent academic and former journalis

Mintzberg's '5 Ps' of strategy have been hugely influential since they were first described forty years ago. Since then, he's added a framework of ten schools of strategy development, all within three basic 'types' of strategy. The rubric should, of course, go far beyond merely providing a template for application, but drive further thought about how it inter-relates. In this vein, I've been wondering recently whether there is now sufficient ground for the recognition of two

This paper argues that the widespread political and public perception of the National Health Service as "broken" is based on a flawed mechanistic understanding of its nature. By applying Karl Popper’s analogy of the Clock versus the Cloud, we assert that the NHS is fundamentally a Complex Adaptive System, analogous to a cloud. Its current difficulties are not failures of individual components requiring 'fixing', but are the entirely predictable, emergent outcomes of its estab

More than twenty-five years ago, the great Russ Ackoff identified three main types of approach to organisational planning: · ‘Reactive’ planning is ‘bottom-up’ and delves directly into the nuts and bolts of an organisation, focusing on individual components and processes in search of improvement in isolation. · ‘Preactive’ planning is ‘top-down’ and attempts to predict and control future events and behaviours, setting out strategic ‘road-maps’ or pre-set courses of

Written on 5 Jan 26, following the US intervention in Venezuela For the last century at least, the foreign policy of the United States has claimed to rest on moral principles: the defence of democracy, the protection of human rights, and the maintenance of a rules-based international order. One of the earliest commentaries – and still perhaps the most profound – on the principles of international relations is Thucydides’ for whom such principles were often mere rhetorical vei

Ed Conway, 'Material World: A Substantial Story of our Past and Future'. W H Allen, London, 2023 This is a truly remarkable book. In an age obsessed with the ethereal – with data, cloud computing, and digital finance – it is easy to forget that the vast edifice of modern civilisation is built upon, and utterly dependent on, brute physical matter. Ed Conway’s ‘Material World’ serves as a powerful and necessary corrective, dragging the reader back to the geological, industrial,

Naoise Mac Sweeney, ‘The West: A New History of an Old Idea’. WH Allen, London, 2023 Our book of the month for November returns to an historian to provide an elegant illustration of the flaws and fallacies of linear and deterministic thinking. Naoíse Mac Sweeney’s ‘The West’ is more than just revisionist history; it fundamentally challenges the dominant narrative, which holds that culture and civilization has followed a single, deterministic path, placing ‘The West’ as an hom

For a nation of just over three million people, Wales has always punched far above its weight on the global rugby stage. The Welsh rugby team is more than just a sports side; it’s a national institution, a source of immense pride, and a key part of the country’s identity. The famous red jersey, the roaring anthems, and the legendary victories have long captivated the world. But in recent years, the roar has quietened. The national team has struggled, results have been inconsi

Beatrice Heuser, 'Flawed Strategy: Why Smart Leaders Make Bad Decisions'. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2025 Beatrice Heuser’s Flawed Strategy: Why Smart Leaders Make Bad Decisions is an illuminating and thought provoking examination of the persistent disconnect between rationality and successful strategy formulation. Heuser is, of course, a notable scholar of history and war, but in our book of the month for October, she provides insightful analysis of the structural, institution

Joshua Cooper Ramo, ‘The Age of the Unthinkable’, New York, Hachette, 2009 It's no longer novel to describe the global environment as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Such continuous observation in the face of our human tendency to seek certainty can leave folks feeling confused and overwhelmed, at least in ‘western’ culture. Unfortunately, far less time is invested in exploring why current attitudes, approaches, processes, and perspectives appear to struggle to d

Strategy sets conditions. The notion that ‘strategy is as much about deciding what not to do as it is about deciding what to do’ is attributed to Michael Porter and is echoed by Richard Rumelt in his book, ‘Good Strategy, Bad Strategy’. Rumelt highlights that bad strategy often stems from an inability to make hard choices and a tendency to try to accommodate too many conflicting demands, leading to a lack of focus. However this process is approached, whether deliberate or not

The publication of a 10-year plan for the National Health Service was a flagship project for the Labour government elected in 2024. It claimed to represent a crucial shift from reactive, short-term planning to a proactive, long-term vision, providing a strategic roadmap to stability, integration, and innovation in a vast and complex institution. For an organisation as large and high-profile as the NHS, short-term political cycles lead to a lack of focus and sustained investme

J. Doyne Farmer, 'Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World'. Allen Lane, 2024 Given our focus on helping organisations navigate complexity and uncertainty with our systems-based approach to strategy design, we were very much looking forward to reading J Doyne Farmer’s 2024 publication, Making Sense of Chaos. The book was generally very well received as an important contribution to widening awareness of complexity and the application of chaos theory, with p

‘Blitzkrieg and the Russia Art of War’ by Andrew Monaghan, Manchester University Press, 1 July 2025 Russia held centre stage in UK’s recent Security Defence Review, and for many beyond the Defence community, Moscow’s government is viewed with distrust, given a perceived history of ‘invading’ others, and as a government that thinks it been hard done by. But,the reality is, as always, much more complicated. Monaghan is recognised as one of the foremost Western thinkers on Russi

'Move: How Mass Migration Will Reshape the World', Parag Khanna, Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, 2021 Given the scrutiny and focus afforded to immigration by most if not all of the world’s leading economies, it is a little surprising that it’s already four years since the publication of our book of the month selection for June. Published in 2021, Parag Khanna’s ‘Move’ is in turn illuminating, provocative, startling, and overwhelming. It provides a broad and deep context for exploring

Joseph S Nye Jr, ‘The Future of Power’. Public Affairs, 2011 Our latest book of the month has even more meaning for us than most of our selections as, remarkably we chose ‘The Future of Power’ before Joseph Nye’s death on 6th May. Undoubtedly one of the world’s pre-eminent authorities on international relations, Nye’s commentaries were accessible, insightful, and prescient. He served two US presidential administrations, and - tellingly - was once invited to a private dinner w

John Kay, ‘Obliquity: Why Our Goals are Best Achieved Indirectly’. Profile Books, 2010 For our Book of the Month for April 2025, we go back to 2010 and re-discover John Kay’s entertaining and insightful argument for ‘Obliquity’. Sir John takes us beyond the concept of lateral thinking, to outline the way in which events transpire in an evolving, and often surprising, chain of connection that often ends up in a different place than we’d imagined. One can be comfortable with th

Strategy is about change. That cuts both ways; as well as being the primary focus of strategy, change is also its greatest challenge. It’s therefore remarkable how little attention most organisations give to the character of change and its relationship with strategy. At the turn of the 21st century, we - Jason Poole and Andrew Firth - were mid-level military officers; both of us having already completed a number of operational deployments with the Royal Navy and the British A