Earlier this week I popped up to Cambridge to the Moller Centre at Churchill College to say hello to Mark Thomas (no relation to this blogger BTW!)) who runs Falconbury’s Executive Mini-MBA programme. It was good to catch up with him and he was in fine form.
One of the things he emphasises to participants during the ‘Monday to Friday MBA’ is the importance of strategic thinking and making sure people make time to do it. Rather than being driven by day-to-day demands, those in key roles owe themselves and their colleagues the duty of making time to think about the business and its direction/priorities.
Too few managers and leaders do this regularly enough. Mark and I discussed a letter which had appeared in The Daily Telegraph and then reprinted in The Week where the correspondent quoted David Cameron’s recent admonishment to the Armed Forces top brass: “You do the fighting, I’ll do the talking”, before going on to point out that it ‘fails to mention who should be responsible for the thinking’. A Mr Roy Souter of Coleshill, Warwickshire was the witty and canny writer. But how many other organisations does his gentle but stinging criticism also apply to?
Mark immediately did a PowerPoint visual to put this telling observation in front of the Falconbury delegates. I hope this is a message they remember and take back to their businesses.
Posted on July 8 2011 by Neil Thomas
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