This website or its third-party tools use cookies which are necessary to its functioning and required to improve your experience. By clicking the consent button, you agree to allow the site to use, collect and/or store cookies.
Please click the consent button to view this website.
I accept
Deny cookies Go Back

Intelligent Management

Deming and Theory of Constraints for CEOs and Executive Teams for the Age of Complexity. Ess3ntial Critical Chain Project Management

  • Home
  • about us
    • the founders
    • Dr. Domenico Lepore
    • Intelligent Management Success Stories
    • Our Books
    • Clients
    • Expanding Spiral of Positive Systemic Results with Intelligent Management
  • Decalogue Methodology
    • Decalogue Methodology for Whole System Management
      • How to adopt systemic organization management
    • Management Must Evolve Fast – 15 Days to Radically Improve Company Performance
    • 10 Steps for Transformation
    • Systemic Organization Management
    • Resource Library for Systemic Management
    • Our Education Modules for Systemic Management
  • Contact
  • Our Whole System Blog
  • Intelligent Management Italia
You are here: Home / Network of Projects / From Silos to System: How to Build an Organization Fit for Complexity

Apr 03 2018

From Silos to System: How to Build an Organization Fit for Complexity

Why are organizations still plagued with all the drawbacks of silos? Because they still adopt a worldview that is out of synch with our times. In order to navigate complexity, organizations must shift from the obsolete, Newtonian worldview of individual, separate and hierarchical parts. What is the direction they need to adopt? Working towards a systemic and interdependent network. This kind of organization is founded on principles of continuous learning, continuous improvement and continuous innovation.

How to build the new organization

How can that be done on a practical level? By  combining the approach of the Theory of Constraints with a purely systemic view based on interdependencies and interactions. It does so in practical terms by:

1. building interdependent processes managed through the control of variation;

2. subordinating these interdependencies to a strategically chosen element of the system called “constraint”;

3. designing the organization as a network of interdependent projects with a goal.

The new organization for complexity: coordination not functional reporting

We know that the hierarchical/functional model is inadequate. It creates artificial barriers and does not allow a true understanding of the organization as a series of recurring and non-recurring activities. An organizational structure should therefore be designed to facilitate the orderly management of sets of activities that are continuously created, coordinated, cross-functional, and that evolve in time. There is a precise name for this in English: projects.

A project is exactly this: a network of interdependencies created to achieve in a well- defined time frame a precise goal. A project is a system with a precise duration. A company viewed as a system is therefore a network of projects, and the orderly creation and timely completion of these projects should accomplish the stated goal of the network.

Curing the silo sickness: let’s sum it up

  1. A functional structure is not suitable to support the systemic approach to managing organizations, and organizations by the nature of their work are cooperative and cross-functional. This is because none of the activities of any company can be performed within the narrow boundaries of a single function;
  2. Any plausible template for an organizational structure that can foster cooperative work must also take into account the evolution in time of the interdependencies needed to accomplish any activity;
  3. In essence, the management of any organization becomes the management of a network of recurring, orderly and evolving-in-time activities. We call them projects. The appropriate hierarchy is exercised through ensuring orderly coordination, not functional reporting;
  4. The backbone of any organizational effort becomes, then, the ability to manage the network of projects any organization is made up of;
  5. We can safely say that the springboard to overcome the seemingly untouchable functional structure is the idea of a company seen as a network (with a stated goal) of projects.

Principles, methods and tools

It is high time we stop repeating the mistakes of the past and embrace our new reality of complexity. We live in a world that is increasingly a network of networks. We have the science, and thanks to the the contribution of two major management thinkers, Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, we also have the method and the tools. Let’s put them to work.

Watch this TedX video where CEO Corrado De Gasperis explains how he learned from our founder, Dr. Domenico Lepore, to understand that organizations can be managed as systems to achieve dramatic results and envisage a new economics.

Sign up to our blog here and shift your thinking towards broader, systemic possibilities for yourself and your organization. Intelligent Management provides education and training  on systemic management, W. Edwards Deming’s management philosophy and the Theory of Constraints  (Decalogue methodology) in North America and Europe.

About the Blog Author and Editor

Angela Montgomery Ph.D. is Partner and Co-founder of Intelligent Management and author of the business novel+ website  The Human Constraint that has sold in over 20 countries. She is co-author with Dr. Domenico Lepore, founder, and Dr. Giovanni Siepe of  ‘Quality, Involvement, Flow: The Systemic Organization’  from CRC Press, New York.

Written by angela montgomery · Categorized: Network of Projects, Systems Thinking, systems view of the world · Tagged: coordination, De Gasperis video, network of projects, silo to system

Search Form

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sign up for our Blog and receive our White Paper ‘Out of the Crisis – A New Kind of Science for Management’

Sign up for our blog here to receive all our blog posts by e-mail.

Search Form

Recent Posts

  • Effective Decision-Making? Understand Your Driver Needs First March 6, 2021
  • Why Is Managing Change So Hard and How Can We Make it Easier? February 25, 2021
  • Creating Connections Between Company Functions – Back to Deming February 19, 2021
  • Human Resources – a New Perspective for Our Post-Pandemic World February 10, 2021
  • What’s Driving Profitability in Your Business and What Isn’t – How to Find Out February 3, 2021
  • Business, Politics, Wall Street: the Learning Organization and Our Interconnected Future January 29, 2021
  • What Does it Take to Be a Leader in Today’s Complex World? January 21, 2021
  • A New Economics for Sustainable Prosperity – Out of the Crisis Series Part 7 January 13, 2021
  • Identifying Assumptions to Unlock Innovation and Move Beyond the Crisis – Out of the Crisis Series Part 6 January 6, 2021
  • Learning to Think Systemically to Make Informed Decisions and Pre-empt a Crisis – Out of the Crisis Part 5 December 30, 2020
  • How to Manage Decentralized Work – Out of the Crisis Series Part 4 December 23, 2020
  • Vital Insights from Managing Variation and Constraints – Out of the Crisis Series Part 3 December 16, 2020
  • What’s Wrong with Organizational Structure – Out of the Crisis Series Part 2 December 9, 2020
  • A Serious Knowledge Gap Affecting Leaders and Executives – Out of the Crisis Series Part 1 December 2, 2020
  • How to Prevent Chaos in Any Project or Initiative November 26, 2020

Social Icons

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Archives

  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011

Recent Posts

  • Effective Decision-Making? Understand Your Driver Needs First March 6, 2021
  • Why Is Managing Change So Hard and How Can We Make it Easier? February 25, 2021
  • Creating Connections Between Company Functions – Back to Deming February 19, 2021
  • Human Resources – a New Perspective for Our Post-Pandemic World February 10, 2021
  • What’s Driving Profitability in Your Business and What Isn’t – How to Find Out February 3, 2021

Connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Sign up for our blog

  • Home
  • Blog Theory of Constraints & Deming
  • Library
  • How to adopt systemic organization management
  • Knowledge Base for ‘The Human Constraint’
  • Contact Us

© 2020 Intelligent Management Inc. Canada

Privacy Policy