Stagis A/S

NEWSLETTER

BLOG

ARCHIVES

April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005

ENTRIES RSS

Stagis on facebook Stagis photo blog

CONTRIBUTORS

Anne Schourup-Kristensen

Designer

Astrid Lindholdt Buch

Project Coordinator

Astrid Lindholdt Buch

Project Coordinator

Project Coordinator

Project Coordinator

Executive Assistant

Project Coordinator

CEO

CEO

Project Coordinator

Stine Christmas Nielsen

13.04.11

For the past three years I've been working on 'Den autentiske virksomhed' (or, The Authentic Company, as it may be in English). Now I'm finally coming to an end. There is a full 360-page manuscript which I'm now editing to about 300 pages. I'm planning to deliver the final document to the publishing house Gyldendal Business sometime in May and hopefully see a real book looking a bit like the picture above during the summer. Besides my theory on business strategy development based on the authentic strengths of the organization, there is a string of case studies in the book. Some of them are Noma, LEGO, Ducati, Alessi, Hästens, Novozymes, BMW and Absolut. I've been really lucky to visit them and talk to their CEOs, owners and leaders.

During the fall I'll tour Denmark to talk about The Authentic Company and discuss how companies of all sorts can explore and develop their strengths from within. Some of the talks are already being arranged as I receive calls almost every week from people who want to discuss authenticity and what it means. Here are some of the talks that I'm doing soon:

14. April 2011, Hewlett-Packard Denmark (workshop)
3. May 2011, Vanebryderdagen 2011, 'Bremen' in Copenhagen (conference)
5. May 2011, Dansk Industri (talk)
11. May 2011, Dansk Kommunikationsforening (Day seminar)
13. May 2011, Medieforbundet i DR (workshop)
23. May 2011, Danske Fysioterapeuter (talk)
23. August 2011, FTF (workshop)
10. October 2011, Master of Management Development, CBS (education)
1. November 2011, Efterskoleforeningens lederkonference (talk)

During May we'll put more video clips from some of my talks on the website and once we get closer to the release date of the Danish book we'll start publishing parts of the content here on the blog, on Facebook and elsewhere. We'll make sure you get notice!

If you want to know more or want to book me for a talk, take a look at stagis.dk (Danish) or stagis.com (English). Lots of students want to know more - don't hesitate to write!

24.10.10

Last weekend I had the pleasure to participate in the seminar: Map Marathon, an event that is part of the annual Frieze Art Fair, based in Regents Park, London. The seminar had an impressive line up of scientists, mathematicians, graphic designers and artists all talking about how mapping can be used and unfolded in different directions and for various purposes. Two sessions caught my mind in particular. One was a presentation made by editor of Wired, David Rowan and Hal Bertram. They revealed the technology behind some amazing new technologies for turning dynamic data into useful mappings. For instance the showed us how OpenStreetMap - an open map system generated by people all over the world - helped the rescue workers when the earthquake hit Haiti, and how the timetables of London buses can show the density of traffic in London. And how the air traffic was monitored during the ash cloud incident last spring.

The other was graphic designer and cartographer Joost Grootens. Joost runs a design studio in Amsterdam, specialized in making books – Atlases in particular. It was impressive to hear Joost explain about the history of mapping, and how the graphic reproductions has developed. The concern of detail in color, typography and precise communication of data in his work, has result in beautifully crafted atlases, that is worth a study in information graphics.

The air traffic of Europe. London Heathrow being the most busy one.

The air traffic of London, projected slightly from the side. Red=departures, blue=arrivals.

The density of traffic in London.

14.09.10

I'm thrilled to tell you, that I'm participating as speaker at Kom-dag 2010 (Communication Day 2010) on November 23rd which is being organized by Danish Communication Association. The theme of the year is authentic and reliable (trustworthy to be exact) corporate communication. At the end of the event the Danish communication prize 2010 will be awarded to the best communication effort of the past year.

The lineup of speakers are:

Peggy Simcic Brønn, professor, BI Norwegian School of Management

Antoine Harrary, StrategyOne, Edelman Europe (they are the ones who release the Trust Barometer every year)

Peter Straarup, Danske Bank

Henrik Dahl, Sociologist and writer

Dorte Spiegelhauer, DR (Danish Broadcast)

Nikolaj Stagis (that's me!), Stagis A/S

Charlotte Mandrup, management advisor and writer, Møller & Mandrup

And it seems there's going to be a series of interactive activities and a board of professors discussing the theme. Exciting day!

Read more about the Kom-dag 2010.

27.08.10

Yesterday afternoon and evening, Stagis hosted the 21st DDA Bar, an event for the members of Danish Design Association. Peter Kreiner, CEO of Noma gave a brief talk on the success of Noma. He also added an important comment on the window of opportunity that not only Noma and Danish restaurants have due to Nomas status as the Worlds leading restaurant. Other Danish companies, especially the creative ones, could use the possibility to travel out in the World and export more of our social and creative skills. At the end of the two talks we decided to create a new platform in Danish Design Association focusing on internationalization in the Danish design industry.

Nikolaj gave a talk on authentic organizational identity, demonstrating our concept of authenticity and explaining how we come about understanding the authentic strengths of the company in order to help them grow into authentic market positions. He used Noma, Bøgedal, Absolut and Ducati as casestudies – all part of the book that Nikolaj is working on (he says there are only the last 80 pages left to go).

After the talks our guests looked around the Stagis Museum which has been updated and we served local, nordic snacks from Manfreds (former Noma chef) and DinBaghave (“YourBackyard”), all organically grown, primarily delivered from Kiselgården, a small farm who also delivers to Noma.

Thank you to everyone who joined us - both new and known faces! We had a lovely evening.

If you want a tour in the Stagis Museum, let us know – just call or drop a line to email@stagis.dk. You can read more on the Danish Design Association website and see more pictures on our Facebook Page.

28.02.10

"Actually, I saw something new about my organization, that I didn't see before," said one of the participants at the end of a lecture I did at Copenhagen Business School a few days ago. She was a senior manager in a large organization and I was asking wether the model we had worked with during the afternoon was of any use to the participants. She had seen something new. To me that's a big thing and about as good as it gets. Most managers don't see anything new most days, as they are primarily focused on communicating how they have been seeing things for a long time, and a lot of them are not keen on admitting it when they do see things in a new light. After all, managers are supposed to see it all clearly from the start, long before everyone else, right?

Seeing new things about your organization and discussing your findings is a really good starting point for keeping what's precious or changing the things that call for change. But too often we don't take the time to ask and listen, rather than talking. So when a tool for looking at the organizational identity helps a top-manager see new aspects of the organization, it's a good thing. It's the foundation for strategic choice; What are you going to allocate more resources and what are you going to limit?

I was lecturing at Master of Management Development, a focused executive MBA-program for senior managers at Copenhagen Business School. MMD is a special place for seeing new things. One of the primary skills that the program develops in the participants is challenging the way things are perceived. There's never one true meaning of things, there are as many as there are people and relations between them. So in a sense it's a great place to present your work, because people want to use the tools at hand to shed new light on their ideas of the company, structures, organization, management, systems and so on.

Professor Majken Schultz had invited me to join the program for the day (just like we did with the last class, two years ago), to talk about authentic organizational identity, the concept I developed while writing my thesis from the exact same program in 2006. The model and the methodology that I've developed in a conceptual framework helps people see the identity of the company in new ways. After presenting my ideas on organizational authenticity we split up into 9 groups and each group worked on one of the specific questions that I've developed to discover the authenticity of the company on three dimensions:

Heritage Authenticity
Reflexive Authenticity
Expressive Authenticity

When we started working on the model itself, I suggested scoring the authentic identity of the MMD program itself. Does the program use it's history? Does it have beliefs of it's own? Does it express it's authentic identity? Everyone was really getting into the exercise, wanting to discuss how several different organizations performed on the three dimensions of authenticity. I was running from one end of the blackboard to the other, sketching up the profiles of the examples brought up. After a few examples one participant brought the process to a halt. "I might see it as very authentic, but my customer would probably see it differently..." he said. And that's one of the things that make the perception of image, identity and the authenticity of an organization so interesting. The truth (if there is such a thing) really depends on the person or the group you ask. The management group, the employees, the customers and the media might see the authenticity of the company in very different perspectives and rate the degree of authenticity of the company accordingly. But when you do ask them, you're bound to see something new about your company - and you can never go back to 'unsee' it again.