WHO WE ARE
AGILE STRATEGY CONTRIBUTORS AND PRACTITIONERS
We are a group of Agile Strategy contributors and practitioners with experience implementing business strategy in fast-moving and uncertain environments. We come from many walks of life including the military, academia, the agile community, management consultancy and from senior leadership roles in the commercial and public sector. We share a passion for improving the way strategy is developed, described, deployed and delivered in the 21st Century.
Our intent is to build a community where people interested in Agile Strategy can influence, collaborate, and build practical solutions that improve business results to create a better future for business and the people working within it.
“Bringing contributors, practitioners and industry partners together to improve business strategy implementation.”
In between jobs, I completed a book about the Battle of Britain called The Most Dangerous Enemy, and shortly after that published another book about the WWII campaign in North Africa called Alamein.
It was in writing Alamein that I chanced across something which I thought could provide a solution to the most intransigent problem faced by my clients – executing strategy in an uncertain environment. The German army under Rommel used an operating model known as Auftragstaktik to translate strategy into action. So effective was it that in the last decades of the C20th it was adopted by most western military organisations under the name ‘mission command’.
When I joined the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in 2001, I set about working out how this model could be applied in business, which culminated in The Art of Action. Most of my work since then has been in helping clients embed that approach, which we now call Leading Through Intent, and that is what has led to agile strategy.
My interest in history remains and every now and again you can see me on TV, usually talking about Spitfires.
My interest in ‘agile strategy’ started when I attended the British Army’s Command and Staff College in 1992, around the time Mission Command doctrine was adopted by NATO and within the British Army. After leaving the Army in 2001, I joined a small team exploring the practical application of military planning techniques in a commercial environment. My first week in that new role was spent in New York in early September 2001. In the aftermath of 9/11 it was immediately clear that the world had changed forever, and more agile approaches to strategy execution would be required.
I now specialise in implementing Leading Through Intent, which is how we embed the principles of Mission Command to help companies develop, deploy and deliver strategies in the dynamic and uncertain environment of the 21st century.
Whilst I genuinely love my work, relishing the challenges of helping companies improve the way people are led, my true passions are downhill skiing, marathon canoeing and cycling. I am Chair of Trustees of a local canoe club, which is also a registered charity.
Agile Strategy Thought Leaders
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