“The only thing that does not require maintenance is obsolescence”, as Dr. W. Edwards Deming used to say. This is a fundamental truth: if we do not evolve, we regress. What makes everything more complicated is the pace at which we must evolve to survive. Technology speeds everything up, including the world of technology. We’ve been looking at […]
How to Start Building Cooperation for the Digital Future
Digitization will inevitably lead organizations to shift their way of working in radical ways, especially regarding cooperation. Dr. Domenico Lepore writes here about transforming the enterprise for the digital future. According to Gartner senior VP Dale Kutnick, digitalization will require: business development; the IT department and the product management or engineering team – to work […]
Protecting Mental Health with Organization Design? Why That’s Possible
Mental health and anxiety are issues that are increasingly to the fore. The wellbeing of employees cannot be separated from how their work is organized, and in so many companies that organization is inadequate for today’s complexity. Indeed, every day, people are struggling with the shortcomings and frustrations of a traditional hierarchical/functional organization. Careers are […]
Biggest Challenge? Not Technology but the Organization Design
A truth is beginning to emerge about how reality is shifting in organizations. It was voiced clearly in a presentation yesterday by the CEO of a forward-thinking digital solutions provider in Italy, Stefano Righetti of Hyphen-Italia. The truth is this: no company will be able do without Digital Transformation, at least for its core processes. […]
Digital Transformation: An Unmissable Opportunity to Reorganize for Growth
With digital transformation increasingly taking center stage in many businesses, more CIOs are reporting to the CEO. The role of IT and the role of the CIO are central to creating a shift in how organizations operate, compete and thrive in this age of complexity. Digital Transformation is an opportunity to completely re-examine and improve […]
Your Organization is Nonlinear – Deal With It
In a Newtonian world, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Hit a billiard ball and it will shoot off in a predictable trajectory. Basic physics. Two of the greatest management thinkers of our times were physicists: W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, both of whom developed systemic approaches to management. At […]
Give Up Busy – Choose Productive
Being busy is considered by many to be a virtue. People may be giving their businesses 200% of effort. But in reality, being busy as you work through a shopping list of “to do” tasks can be the opposite of virtuous. How? Because it can lead to wasting time on the wrong things, unproductive multi-tasking […]
The Damage from Silos in Your Organization: A Systems View
Most organizations are hierarchical. This way of managing means that responsibility gets divided up into functions and the ‘head’ of each function is responsible for the results of that function and the budget allocated. Isn’t this rational? After all, the notion of hierarchy is as old as the bible. Literally. Moses was introduced to it […]
Why Do We Get Stuck on the Path to Change? The Human Constraint
Why is it so difficult to change, even when we know how to make it happen? Why is it so difficult to embrace newly learned and valid concepts and apply them? There are reasons why people resist change and there are also practical ways to work towards achieving an agreed upon goal. This was part […]
Where Digital Transformation is Taking You and Your Organization
Change is happening fast and everywhere. The familiar is shifting from a physical, tangible world to a reality that is online and digital. Even some of our oldest, even ancient industries like printing and clothes manufacturing are becoming increasingly digitized. What do these changes mean for the business world and where are they taking us? […]