Today’s post is by our Founder, Dr. Domenico Lepore. We have been writing extensively about the benefits of a design that mirrors the inherent project nature of the work of any organization. We call it the ‘Network of Projects’ organization design. The steps to build a Network of Projects organization are: 1) Recognizing that organizations are Systems, Networks of […]
Systemic Change Management – a Joined-Up Way to Transform
“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 […]
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 […]
Education for the Future of Work? Think Projects and Networks
Work is becoming increasingly project-based; the ability to navigate networks and work within a team towards the completion of simple and complex projects will be required of the future workforce. Unfortunately, we are still basing our education system today on models and content that were appropriate 50-100 years ago but that are no longer so […]
A Project-Based Organization to Radically Improve Performance
Competencies not power, common goal instead of function/silo results, these are the elements of an organization built on projects. We all know that what matters is the global (overall) bottom line of any organization. And yet, when we measure performance, we connect it with functional, i.e. silo results. How do we come out of this seemingly irreconcilable conflict? We […]
What is a Project Manager?
The term Project Manager is much abused. We look at a precise definition of what Project Manager means in a systemic organization, where projects make up the nervous system of the organization. An organization is essentially a network of projects with a goal An organization is essentially a network of projects with a goal. There are projects that […]
Network of Teams – A Cognitive Ordeal?
Last month we published ‘Team of Teams – a Systems View‘ that garnered quite a bit of attention. The subject of teams is a hot one. Articles on the matter abound, like this one from Deloitte, ‘ Organizational Design – The Rise of Teams’ According to Deloitte, “Businesses are reinventing themselves to operate as networks of […]
Team of Teams- A Systems View
Teams are at the core of successful work in organizations. Very few things can be accomplished by individuals. There is increasing talk about teams. Inspiring work has been done in military environments, as illustrated through the book Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal. But what is a team? How do you choose the members, and […]
How a CIO Can Learn to Drive Real Business Results
Ideally, the role of the CIO should be to manage the Quality of how humans and technology interact to produce real business results. In reality, CIOs today find themselves constrained in what they can achieve operationally. On the one hand, they need to be able to improve business performance. This leads them to want to […]
Quantifying the Business Value of Systemic vs Silo Management
A business leader recently asked us about quantifying the business value of a systemic approach to management. This is someone who completely understands that it makes much more sense to work in an integrated and collaborative way rather than within a “functional empire”. The question was, what can we say to people about the quantifiable […]
