Thinking from Within: A Hands-On Strategy Practice

by Johan Roos

"To deal effectively and responsibly with new circumstances, leaders should complement well-known routines for strategic analysis with practices that both fire people's imagination and stimulate the spontaneity of their wisdom - Thinking from Within. The practice of thinking from within energizes our minds by engaging our senses in ways pure intellectual reason does we do, rather than just think strategy." The benefits of Thinking from Within are many and profound. The concept allows the "flatland" of two-dimensional papers and screens to be abandoned and, in dealing with issues of organizational identity, creates the conditions for "peak experiences". Strategy practice becomes a deep and authentic experience that educates us to act wisely.

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2006

About the author

A Swedish organizational theorist, and Chief Strategy Officer at Hult International Business School, known for his work on intellectual capital

Reviews

[Bernd · Rating 2 out of 5]

This short, densely written book consists of chapters co-written by Swiss academic Johan Roos and his collaborators, who ignore hardly any aspect of play and imagination, detailing what philosophers, psychologists and others have said about these subjects. Their purpose is to demonstrate that the Enlightenment values of rationality and analytical precision have unbalanced managerial thinking – and how you can right the scales to create a flexible, innovative organization that reacts quickly to unpredictable situations. Unfortunately, so thorough is these professors’ treatment of play that they take the fun out of it. A series of close-up photographs shows managers – mostly white men in shirts and ties – at play, or at least pointing at toys and models on a table. After seeing their stiff attitudes you won’t be surprised to read case studies that demonstrate the difficulty of applying the ideas in the book.