Phoenix Strategic Management

Thanks to Pan-Asian think tank, Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT), for bringing this to my attention.

For those truly interested in the big picture, I am sure that this event will be fascinating.

Australia was burning.

In late 2019 and early 2020, my home country felt like it was on fire from one side of the continent to the other.

Standing at Sydney Harbour, you could see almost nothing of the iconic Bridge or Opera House through the smoke. We are estimated to have lost three billion animals.

Three billion.

I had begun researching Confronting the Storm at that time, surrounded by seething public fury at leaders who appeared slow to act, lacking in empathy, and focused on spinning alternate facts.

Then we began hearing about a virus in Wuhan.

Almost overnight, the demand for climate action dissipated. Leaders who struggled to walk and chew gum at the same time pivoted to pandemic response. And quietly, the other storms kept building.

That is what this age of uncertainty actually looks like. Not one crisis at a time, but many — compounding, accelerating, interconnecting.

For leaders who still believe that normal is just around the corner: I understand the appeal.

But I can't share it.

For more details on Confronting the Storm, head to: https://bit.ly/43umGyW

Before you think about skimming over this post and moving on, The Fragile World Briefing 👇 is written for leaders and managers who realise that they are navigating conditions that no longer behave as expected.

#6. *Inertia: When the World Moves Beneath Your Feet*

"Inertia is more than resistance to change. it is the tendency of systems to continue doing what they were designed to do, even when the environment around them has fundamentally changed. The greater the investment in today’s structures, incentives, and assumptions, the harder they become to interrupt. Inertia is not simply a failure of leadership; it is evidence that many institutions are faithfully producing the outcomes they were designed to produce.

The problem is that they were designed for a world that no longer exists. That inaction is not passive. It is signaled, consistently, by the institutions."

If you haven't got the time to read the Briefing, you may be interested in contemplating the reflections; namely:

👉 Where, in your own decision-making, have you mistaken “looking busy” for making progress? For achieving outcomes with respect to those issues that are important but not so urgent?

👉 Which of your organisation’s short-term incentives are quietly protecting the status quo - and who benefits from them remaining in place?

👉 If inertia’s ramifications are already seismic yet often invisible, what would it take for you to act before the evidence becomes undeniable?

The link to the Briefing is in the comments. 👇

Otherwise, I look forward to reading your thoughts or what came out of the reflections for you. Where are you seeing inertia? And what are the ripples, subsequently, created?

Your stakeholders are more sophisticated, coordinated, and demanding than ever before.

They compare notes across organisations. They organise before you've finished your first internal meeting. They know the playbook you're running because they've seen it fail elsewhere, and they no longer wait patiently for you to catch up. This isn't a communications problem. It's a structural shift in who holds power in the relationship, and most organisations are still responding as if it's 2015.

The reason conflict is showing up more often isn't that stakeholders have become more difficult. It's that the world they're operating in has become more fragile — supply chains, institutions, and public trust all thinner than they used to be, all failing in ways that ripple faster and further.

Fragility doesn't create conflict on its own. It removes the slack that used to absorb it. Every misstep now finds an audience already primed to react. The organisations that will hold their ground aren't the ones with the best messaging — they're the ones who understand that the terrain itself has changed.

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Entering the flow state with Cliff. 🌊 Cliff Kimber is a thoughtful business coach and writer based in the UK. We’d like to congratulate him on today’s release of his new book ‘Born to Flow’, published by Routledge. Smorgasbord developed the book’s diagrams in collaboration with Cliff; it was a satisfyingly chewy exercise to find the best visual metaphors to express subtle concepts and help the reader engage fully with the book’s themes.
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Imagine you live in far northern Queensland. You have two little neurodiverse girls – and you might even be a little neurospicy yourself. What resources can you draw on? Where do you go to link up with other similar families? Do you feel seen?
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This was the reality facing Sam Paterson and her husband Phil. But, together, they decided to do something about it. First, a practical project: fitting out a trailer as a mobile sensory space for rent. When things feel overwhelming outside, it offers a comfortable, quiet space to rest and reset. Light sculptures glow in the dark as a soft soundscape plays in the background.
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We were thrilled to work with Sam and Phil from the very beginning. After a brand workshop to help define what they wanted to be, we developed an identity that featured an active, dancing figure – symbolic of a confident participant, not a timid ‘special case’. In between, we found them a name – Everyday People – that reflected their belief that labelling some people as ‘special’ wasn’t as helpful as broadening the attitudes and environments around them. So that more people, everyday people, can feel like they belong.
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See for more
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Imagine you live in far northern Queensland. You have two little neurodiverse girls – and you might even be a little neurospicy yourself. What resources can you draw on? Where do you go to link up with other similar families? Do you feel seen?
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This was the reality facing Sam Paterson and her husband Phil. But, together, they decided to do something about it. First, a practical project: fitting out a trailer as a mobile sensory space for rent. When things feel overwhelming outside, it offers a comfortable, quiet space to rest and reset. Light sculptures glow in the dark as a soft soundscape plays in the background.
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We were thrilled to work with Sam and Phil from the very beginning. After a brand workshop to help define what they wanted to be, we developed an identity that featured an active, dancing figure – symbolic of a confident participant, not a timid ‘special case’. In between, we found them a name – Everyday People – that reflected their belief that labelling some people as ‘special’ wasn’t as helpful as broadening the attitudes and environments around them. So that more people, everyday people, can feel like they belong.
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See for more
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smorgasbordcreative

Before you think about skimming over this post and moving on, 'The Fragile World Briefing' 👇 is written for leaders and managers who realise that they are navigating conditions that no longer behave as expected.

#5. Entangled: The Compounding Logic of a Fragile World

"The data centre example is not exceptional. The same compounding dynamic is visible in housing supply crises, in the governance of emerging tech, in the management of natural resources under climate stress, and in the fracturing of institutional trust across many sectors.

What makes this moment demanding for leaders is not any one condition, but all of them happening at the same time. A response calibrated for one condition in isolation can inadvertently worsen another. Moving faster to address rapidity, without attending to alienation, deepens the trust deficit. Driving coordination to address fragmentation, without attending to ground-shift, risks coordinating around assumptions that are no longer valid.

Organisations that continue to treat these as separate, sequential issues will find themselves persistently struggling. The compounding is the condition."

If you haven't got the time to read the Briefing, you may be interested in contemplating the reflections; namely:

👉 Where in your organisation are Fragmentation, Rapidity, Alienation, and Ground-shift operating simultaneously? Are they being treated as separate issues?
👉 When your organisation responds to one of these conditions, does it assess the effect on the others? Or does it optimise for the part while weakening the whole?
👉 Who in your organisation is responsible for seeing the system as a whole?

I look forward to reading your thoughts or what came out of the reflections for you.

The Fragile World Briefing 5: Entangled - The Compounding Logic of a Fragile World Editor’s note: Before you think about pressing the delete button, The Fragile World Briefing is written for leaders and managers who realise that they are navigating conditions that no longer behave as expected. It brings together emerging signals and systemic patterns shaping a fragile, interconn...

Jane and I did get to meet on a few occasions. 😊

We talked about everyday things — a shared love of dogs — and about the state of the world. At one point Jane said that it is young people that give her hope.

I've thought about that a lot since.

Because as much as I admire the sentiment, I think it's also an indictment — of our systems, and of our old mindsets that facilitated the building of those systems. If the hope of the world rests on the young, what exactly have the rest of us been doing?

That tension is at the heart of *Confronting the Storm*. I argue that traditional leadership wisdom is buckling and failing in response to the storm of complex social, environmental, and economic challenges that we now face. And then some.

Regenerative leadership isn't a nice idea. It's an obligation.

Jane Goodall lived that. Entirely.

I am deeply grateful our paths crossed.

For more details on 'Confronting the Storm', head to https://bit.ly/43umGyW