“For me, strategy is a company’s or an organisation’s unique way of sustainable value creation.  In my approach, in the very definition of strategy, there is this word “sustainable” and the way I mean this is not just planet proof but also sustainable from a commercial perspective, from a strategic point of view. If that’s the core, if sustainable value creation is your core and not competitive advantage, growth, profits and so on and you at least start with the right attitude, the right mindset.

Because it’s about contribution. It’s about thinking, who is this for? Who’s the customer? Who’s the target group? How do I create value for that customer? So how do I solve the real problem, how do I really help them?  How do I do that in a sustainable way which means I take into account the interest of different stakeholders, I take into account the limited resources, the boundaries of our planet?”

 

This episode of the humans at work podcast features conversation with Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, author of The Strategy Handbook: The Secret Sauce to Daily Business Success and The One-Hour Strategy: Building a Company of Strategic Thinkers, and consultant supporting organisations around the world with more effective strategic thinking.

Jeroen is a powerhouse of strategy and leadership content development, using his repository of concepts and models and turning them into practical advice. Jeroen and I talk about strategy as a collective sense-making process, and the benefits of using strategic tools across all aspects of your life. And we talk about challenging our mindsets for sustainable value creation, and the need for ‘unlearning’ or rethinking.

Jeroen and I talk about:

• Reasons, openness and the opportunities of remote working
• Falling back into habits of filling your life post-pandemic
• Commonalities of humankind when working internationally
• The opportunities and challenges of working in academia
• Starting your consulting practice
• Whether having an academic or theoretical background helps or hinders your career
• The value of concepts and models to validate your intuition
• Discipline and dedication of impactful LinkedIn posting
• What it takes to write books about strategy
• Strategy as a collective, integrative and community process
•  Decision-making as an intuitive process
• Vulnerability as a key leadership trait
• Sustainable value creation to help address sustainability challenges for organisations
• Generative AI and the ongoing importance of imagination, voice, judgement and connection.

Resources and Links:

To learn more about Jeroen:

Visit Jeroen at https://www.jeroenkraaijenbrink.com/

Follow Jeroen on LinkedIn 

To dive into the concept of Strategy: 

The Strategy Handbook: The Secret Sauce to Daily Business Success

The One Hour Strategy: Building a Company of Strategic Thinkers

Certified Strategy & Implementation Consultant Certification course

Join us at humans at work:

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