A series for contemplation, sharing, and discussion over coffee.
The series published on vanrooyen.info is not a set of disconnected blog posts. It is a coherent intellectual project aimed at a senior management audience: the argument that effective leadership in the current environment requires genuinely internalised conceptual frameworks — not tools to be selected from a menu, but lenses through which one sees. The four concepts (systems thinking, strategic thinking, cultural understanding, change management) are introduced as a system, not a list.
Most of what passes for insight in organisational life is either too abstract to be useful or too tactical to last. These reflections are an attempt to occupy the space in between: writing that is grounded in theory but firmly anchored in the realities of practice, and aimed at anyone who leads, manages, or advises organisations and wants to think more clearly about what they are doing and why.
The reflections address substantive organisational and societal questions in a more conceptual approach, reading between the lines, examining the mental models and assumptions that shape — and often constrain — how we think about strategy, culture, and organisational change. It traces the roots of business functioning from early human survival behaviour through to contemporary management practice.
The only diagrammatical way to represent these four is as a tetrahedron or a three-dimensional figure with four triangular faces – the international shorthand for change. In normal terms it can be described as a three-sided pyramid. The three sides of the pyramid represent change, strategy, and culture. Underpinning all of it is a systems-thinking perspective: the conviction that strategy, culture, and change cannot be understood in isolation from one another, and that the most persistent management failures tend to result from treating complex human systems as though they were simple mechanical ones.
A new postwill be published every week. Some will challenge assumptions. Some will offer frameworks. All of them are written with a single purpose: to translate decades of insight into ideas. Ideas that are accessible, principled, and genuinely useful to the people who lead and develop organisations.
Pull up a chair. The coffee’s on.
Register to receive email notification when they are published
- Reflection 7 – Strategy and Planning
Millions or Billions, wasted or well spent? Millions – if not billions – of rands and dollars are spent annually on strategic planning sessions. Whether all of this represents genuine value or significant waste is a question worth asking. Consultants would probably agree that a large proportion of strategic plans end up stored somewhere, forgotten … Continued - Reflection 6 – Has Capitalism Failed Us?
Are we in a perfect storm? Open any news article, and it becomes clear that executive remuneration has become a contentious issue. To discuss this, we first need to step back and look at the broader environment in which organisations operate. A useful tool for this is the PEST analysis – a framework commonly used … Continued - Reflection 5 – Change and Change Agents
Change, Strategy, Culture, and the Change Agent It has become a cliché to speak of the pace and degree of change in the 21st century – yet the observation is ancient. The philosopher Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BC) held that “on those who enter the same rivers, ever different waters flow,”1 and Plato expanded on this, writing … Continued - Reflection 4 – The Eternal Business Story
From Hunting and Gathering to Strategic Management The basis of business – whether it is called that or not – has existed for thousands of years. Fundamentally, businesses still function along principles that would have been recognisable to our earliest ancestors: hunting and gathering. The key difference is that the actual hunting and gathering have … Continued - Reflection 3 – Categories and Groupings
Science, Systems, and Change “If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts – physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on – remember that nature does not know it.” – Feynman, R. P. (1964)¹ Introduction: The Dangers of Neat Categories It is not unusual to hear people … Continued - Reflection 2: Models for Understanding:
From Parts to Purposeful Wholes. There is a deceptively simple model used in the development of training materials that carries a profound insight about the nature of learning. It is called the Whole-Parts-Whole (WPW) model. As the name suggests, it begins by presenting the whole – the complete picture – before moving into the constituent … Continued - Reflection 1: The Choice.
Changing course and why managing with yesterday’s thinking produces tomorrow’s failures. If up to 75% of organisational change initiatives fail — a figure that has been regularly used since the late 1900s — what makes you confident that the next one will be different?
All Reflections written by Jan van Rooyen
