by Mark Harling | Jul 4, 2025 | Blog
The Case of the Unfriendly Slug: Why Your Organisational Map Might Be Holding You Back (And What to Do About It) In my last two posts, I shared how organisational transformation often fails because leaders are navigating with outdated, incomplete, or misleading maps,...
by Mark Harling | Jul 3, 2025 | Blog, UK
Most organisational change transformation efforts fail because leaders rely on outdated maps. I saw this firsthand when a pharmaceutical client proudly showed me volumes of compliance data, yet couldn’t explain why their multi-million dollar decisions kept going...
by Mark Harling | Jul 1, 2025 | Blog, UK
“Strategy” and “Alignment” sound like consultant-speak. But they’re not. They’re just names for very practical things. Strategy is simply thinking long-term about what you want to achieve, with a plan to get there. It’s not a daydream. It’s a destination with a...
by Mark Harling | Jul 1, 2025 | Blog
Change is hard, especially in organisations where culture, processes, and human dynamics collide. Over the years, I’ve guided companies through transformations, and one truth stands out: you can’t manage what you don’t understand. Here’s a quick overview of what I’ve...
by Mark Harling | Jun 30, 2025 | Blog
Do you ever feel like your organisation is constantly stuck on a hamster wheel of false choices? Centralised vs. Decentralised? Innovation vs. Stability? Short-term results vs. Long-term vision? People vs. Profit? We treat these as problems to solve by picking one...
by Mark Harling | Jun 23, 2025 | Blog
Over the past few months, I had the privilege of supporting a visionary tech company during a critical leadership transition. Unlike many organisations focused on replacing cogs, they recognised that filling a role was not about finding an identical spare part – it...
by Mark Harling | Jun 11, 2025 | Blog
How can we encourage our operational leaders to think more strategically? This question has been on my mind recently, particularly after reading some new research on the subject. One notable finding is that: 97% of senior executives rate strategic thinking as the most...
by Mark Harling | May 9, 2025 | Blog
This year at the CREA Conference, I had the privilege of sharing a meal with Guy Aznar. For those unfamiliar, Guy is a pioneer in applied creativity—a French psychologist who founded Synapse in 1966, the first French organization dedicated to creative thinking. He...
by Mark Harling | May 2, 2025 | Blog
As someone who’s spent years working in change and transformation, I’ve heard the phrase “resistance to change” more times than I can count. It’s a convenient label, but I’ve never been fully convinced it tells the real story. People aren’t inherently...
by Mark Harling | Mar 31, 2025 | Blog
Recently, I had the opportunity to work on a project in South Africa, a country rich in culture, history, and diversity. This experience was both enlightening and challenging, offering profound insights into leadership, cultural sensitivity, and the importance of...
