The current crisis is driving home dramatically the realization that organizations need to make more and do more with the resources they have available. We will only achieve this if we are able to undertake a shift in the way we understand how to manage all the resources available in a sustainable way. It is […]
Identifying Assumptions to Unlock Innovation and Move Beyond the Crisis – Out of the Crisis Series Part 6
In the previous part of this series, Part 5: Learning to Think Systemically to Make Informed Decisions and Pre-empt a Crisis, we saw how the Conflict Cloud Thinking Process helps us identify a situation of blockage and understand why this blockage exists in the first place. What keeps us stuck is the set of assumptions, or […]
Learning to Think Systemically to Make Informed Decisions and Pre-empt a Crisis – Out of the Crisis Part 5
What is the real difficulty that we face in wanting to create a true learning organization that overcomes the hierarchical/functional structure and replaces it with the far more suitable network of projects? The real issue here derives from the mental barriers that prevent individuals and organizations from working together as a system for a common […]
How to Manage Decentralized Work – Out of the Crisis Series Part 4
Making the best use of the resources we have in a sustainable way was always necessary, but it has become dramatically evident and urgent following the Coronavirus crisis. The lockdowns that have forced organizations to carry on working outside their normal locations are accelerating a major change that was already taking place – the shift […]
Vital Insights from Managing Variation and Constraints – Out of the Crisis Series Part 3
Putting new knowledge to work: Managing Variation and Constraints Stamp out the fire and get nowhere. Stamp out the fires puts us back to where we were in the first place. Taking action on the basis of results without theory of knowledge, without theory of variation, without knowledge about a system. Anything goes wrong, do something about it, […]
What’s Wrong with Organizational Structure – Out of the Crisis Series Part 2
Beneath the tragedy of lost and disrupted lives and the domino effect of economic hardship, the COVID-19 crisis is revealing an organizational crisis. Many more crises will inevitably continue to plague the world going forward, perhaps with increasing frequency, and so it is vital to understand much better the underlying organizational paradigm and organizational structure that […]
A Serious Knowledge Gap Affecting Leaders and Executives – Out of the Crisis Series Part 1
Introducing this series We decided to publish this series to comment on what we see as an urgent issue. The global crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting a serious knowledge gap affecting leaders and executives. This gap leaves them unprepared to interpret and respond with speed to complex, non-linear phenomena. It is nothing […]
How to Prevent Chaos in Any Project or Initiative
Projects, or any initiative we embark on, can easily get out of hand. They are subject to the chaos that can arise when human interactions are not governed by precise guidelines. Entropy exists and it affects behaviours as well everything else. When we use the Transition Tree Tool to break projects down into actions we […]
The Words We Use Can Change Our Reality – Shifting to a Systems View
This morning I spoke to a highly accomplished, bi-lingual woman who works in software. We agreed that the words we use when we work can have an enormous impact. For example, in her environment, the word “project” has acquired a stigma because of the pain associated with it so now she talks about “initiatives”. This […]
The Human Constraint – Going Beyond What We Think Is Possible
Our lives today are filled with unprecedented levels of rapid change and complexity. Unintended consequences can quickly emerge from inadequate leadership thinking, so we must urgently learn to think not just in a “joined-up” way but in a systemic way. This means developing the skills to: understand and analyze our current reality, as individuals and organizations; […]