About this episode

Norman Wolfe discusses the flaws in treating organizations as machines and shares insights from his experience and his book, The Living Organization.

Norman Wolfe spent 40+ years inside organizations, including a long stretch at Hewlett-Packard, before noticing something nobody could explain: 70% of companies fail at strategy execution, despite shelves of books telling them how to succeed. His answer? We're stuck in a paradigm trap, treating organizations as machines and people as component parts. In this conversation, Norman shares the framework behind his book The Living Organization, the three forces that actually create results (doing, relationships, and context), and the story of how he once crushed a goal at HP that he completely forgot about and never tracked. We also get into why mental models quietly run our lives, how improvisation is a more useful operating system than control, and why the leaders who push hardest often achieve the least. A conversation for anyone who's tired of grinding and wondering if there's a better way to lead. Find Norman at quantumleaders.com. Chapters 00:00 Why organizations aren't machines 03:00 The 70% strategy execution problem 06:30 What 40 years of leadership taught Norman about ease 09:00 The three forces: doing, relationships, and context 13:00 The HP goal he hit without trying 17:00…

People in this episode

Host: David Fung

Guest: Norman Wolfe

Topics covered

• strategy execution
• leadership
• organizational behavior
• mental models
• improvisation
• results

Keywords

• strategy execution
• leadership
• organizational behavior
• mental models
• improvisation
• results
• Norman Wolfe
• Hewlett-Packard

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Hewlett-Packard, quantumleaders.com

Books & works: The Living Organization

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