Today’s post is by Dr. Giovanni Siepe. The Theory of Constraints is a management methodology developed by the physicist Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt in the late 1970s. There is little doubt about how radically effective TOC is and that remarkable results have been achieved with it in all kinds of sectors, from healthcare to steel foundries […]
What Kind of Company Hierarchy Works for the Digital Age?
The traditional top down company hierarchy has become a trap. It inevitably leads to silos, discontent and an overall suboptimization of all the resources in any company. That is a very heavy burden to carry. The traditional hierarchical/functional structure is one where the sum of individual efforts and departments is considered equal to the performance […]
Physics and Management: What You Must Understand to Lead and Manage Today
Continuing on from our post last week that included a “Quantum perspective”, one of our two very own physicists, Dr. Giovanni Siepe, writes today about physics and management and what leaders and managers need to know. Physics has been considered for a long time a “reductionist discipline” dedicated to the understanding, description and interpretation of […]
Systems Thinking and Quantum Theory – Why We Need Them for Business
Readers of this blog will know that we promote a systemic understanding of companies and a systems science-based method for managing all aspects of an enterprise, from strategy through to day-to-day operations. We see organizations as entities that are not a collection of separate pieces but as highly interconnected networks of projects and there is an […]
How to Cope With Change: Understanding Cause and Effect
Dr. W. Edwards Deming used to say: “The only thing that does not require maintenance is obsolescence”. 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. Nobody would recommend change for the sake of it. However, our […]
Managing Change Effectively with a Systemic Framework and Method
Whenever we think about managing change, it can’t just be abstract. We need some kind of framework and method. It is highly useful to consider three phases that happen when we introduce change, as identified in the Theory of Constraints (TOC): what to change what to change to how to make the change happen For […]
Decisions and Change – Thinking Processes for a Complex World
Why is the world today so complex? Because interconnections and interdependencies multiply at an ever-increasing speed. On top of this, we struggle to understand how this new kind of reality works. Every day, we participate in a super intricate ‘network of networks’ but we have a very limited understanding of the underlying properties of these […]
Effective Decision-Making? Understand Your Driver Needs First
When it comes to change, we find ourselves in a fundamental conflict. On the one hand, we don’t want to change because we want to protect a deep need for “control”. On the other hand, we want to change because we want to protect a deep need connected with “vision” or growth. Both needs are […]
Why Is Managing Change So Hard and How Can We Make it Easier?
Nothing in our world today is quite the same as it was just a year ago. Many people have had to change completely the way they work and live and many will never “return to normal”. Managing change is something that all of us must become familiar with and it has become a fundamental element […]
Creating Connections Between Company Functions – Back to Deming
We’re a little late this week with our post as we are working intensively with clients who are growing, in spite of a global crisis. This is one of the principal benefits of adopting a systemic approach. We would like to share with you something that the Director of an international recruiting company posted […]