Oct 2, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 14 segments
"You know how I know what the real culture of a company is? \[Two] things. Who gets the money and who gets promoted." Robert Burgelman, the Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management at Stanford…
Aidan McCullenHost
And you're, you've reminded me of, we were talking before you came on air, another paper you're writing about the, the company jumped into therapeutics a little bit too early and that paid our huge price.
There's one last thing I wanted to ask you, and it's about encouraging autonomous strategic behavior.
So you essentially say top management can encourage autonomous strategic behavior by making it relatively easier for middle managers to obtain resources to try things, to deploy in projects that don't flow from mandates from the top, right? So Don Soule, who...
is a guest I've been chasing for a long time co-author with you in from resource allocation to strategy from that book that we studied Don I've been chasing Don to come on the show Don if you're listening man I'm after you I'm coming but he said that he found in research I just can't see how this could be possible 50% of middle managers are confident of securing significant resources that fall outside their strategic objectives but here's the thing and this reminded me of something else That they don't or they seldom take advantage of that.
Many of the HQs of many of the US companies are in Ireland, as you probably know.
Many of the employees in those companies get a budget every year to spend on personal learning or education.
If they do, maybe they have an audible subscription, never really listened to the audio books.
And I thought that that, that is an important thing to call out that when they have it, they don't use it.
And one important reason you say is that, and this is the really, really, really, really difficult thing is.
Executives tend to look on, say it's for me, for example, and I deviate from detailed and measured and rewarded roadmaps that specify what I should do and when and by what time, then that I'm ill-disciplined or I'm a dreamer or I'm a bit loose or maybe I'm a bit crazy.
And you're, you've reminded me of, we were talking before you came on air, another paper you're writing about the, the company jumped into therapeutics a little bit too early and that paid our huge price.
There's one last thing I wanted to ask you, and it's about encouraging autonomous strategic behavior.
So you essentially say top management can encourage autonomous strategic behavior by making it relatively easier for middle managers to obtain resources to try things, to deploy in projects that don't flow from mandates from the top, right? So Don Soule, who...
is a guest I've been chasing for a long time co-author with you in from resource allocation to strategy from that book that we studied Don I've been chasing Don to come on the show Don if you're listening man I'm after you I'm coming but he said that he found in research I just can't see how this could be possible 50% of middle managers are confident of securing significant resources that fall outside their strategic objectives but here's the thing and this reminded me of something else That they don't or they seldom take advantage of that.
Many of the HQs of many of the US companies are in Ireland, as you probably know.
Many of the employees in those companies get a budget every year to spend on personal learning or education.
If they do, maybe they have an audible subscription, never really listened to the audio books.
And I thought that that, that is an important thing to call out that when they have it, they don't use it.
And one important reason you say is that, and this is the really, really, really, really difficult thing is.
Executives tend to look on, say it's for me, for example, and I deviate from detailed and measured and rewarded roadmaps that specify what I should do and when and by what time, then that I'm ill-disciplined or I'm a dreamer or I'm a bit loose or maybe I'm a bit crazy.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.