Make Bets not Plans – new&able think talk

The book draws on the videotape of a lively discussion with Dagmar Woyde-Koehler, Gebhard Borck, together with entrepreneurs and managers during a think-talk evening organized by the Karlsruhe organizational consultancy new&able.

The ways in which companies usually develop strategy and planning were examined from a number of angles. The book basically situates all such aspects in the difference between “planning that anticipates the future” and “betting that leaves the future open”. Rather than preaching the one true path, the discussion invites exploration of new and intelligent avenues of approach. This is coupled with an unusually clear grasp of the actual day-to-day reality in our company offices and boardrooms, enriched with a wealth of practical examples that bear the unmistakable stamp of real company life. The upshot is a book that’s as entertaining as it’s serious and close to actual business practice.

This smorgasbord of excerpts from the evening’s taped discussions, sketchnotes, comics, thought-provoking margin notes and much more tempts readers to stray from the well trodden paths of the usual canon of management prescriptions and take on fresh new perspectives. The very reverse of dogmatic, this is an interactive, inspirational picture book for managers and strategists that deliberately undermines the authors‘ prerogative of interpretation. It’s the equally invigorating continuation of that evening’s think-talk and an entertaining invitation to outside-the-envelope thinking and discovery on a very high level. 

Table of Content:
#Betting or gambling
Betting on yourself
The psychology of betting
Preempting the future with a plan
Plans as structured thinking
Planning obstructs intelligence
When planning becomes philosophical
Employees use the plan to optimize their personal situations
The audience joins the conversation
Plans give you orientation
Dictatorships, plans and co-determination
Deciding strategy together with 10,000 employees
Plans need geniuses
Integrating planning, management & employees
Bets versus plans in communication with employees
Plans and security
Betting and risks
Are crowd decisions better when crowds are asked the right questions?
Planning and group processes
Planning and the vagaries of chance
Betting with feedback versus target-performance comparisons
What does the strategy department learn from this?
The probability of failure
Levels of decision – strategies - bets
Betting in practical roll-out (1): the billion euro project
Betting in practical roll-out (2): a customer project with a dynamic upper limit on capacity
Betting in practical roll-out (3): corporate democracy
Are the dynamics of betting only good for medium-sized enterprises?
The present-day meaning
Isles of Bliss – not viewed kindly by the traditional economy ä Dynamic target systems
No more planned economies ;-)
About
new&able thinktalk
Dagmar Woyde-Koehler
Gebhard Borck
Franziska Köppe