It’s a new year and this month the Intelligent Management team are completing a new book! We are particularly honoured to be publishing something again with Springer, this time as part of their SpringerBriefs in Complexity Series. While our new book will appeal to those interested in the most scientific and mathematical aspects of managing […]
Project Management Kryptonite: Silos and Mismatched Authority and Responsibility
If you Google the term ‘Project Management’ you will find hundreds of millions of results. It is a multi-billion dollar business and there are official institutes that train Project Managers. So why do so many projects still fail to deliver? In this post we are concerned with internal projects in an organization and what happens […]
How to Scale a Business Sustainably
In the previous article in this series, our Founder Dr. Domenico Lepore, described the evolution of a systemic solution for managing organizations and avoiding silos. Here in Part Four, he answers the question “How do you put it into action?” In 1999, we still did not have a sufficiently generic and comprehensive answer to how […]
Ditch Departments to Scale Your Business Sustainably and Systemically
Our complex world is changing fast and the prevailing style of management that creates silos cannot react quickly enough. What is a realistic and operational alternative to scale your business organically? First, why do we have hierarchies? Silos are a natural offspring of traditionally hierarchical companies divided into functions and departments. Why do hierarchies exist […]
Shaping Organizations for the Digital Age
We were invited by E-3 Magazine International, an independent SAP Trends and analyses magazine, to write a series on Digital Transformation. Here is the first of those articles written by our Founder, Dr. Domenico Lepore. Unrelenting and unlimited: two words that spring to mind about the Digital Age. The advance of Digital Transformation is unrelenting […]
Always Be Adding Value in the Digital Age
The unstoppable advance of Digital Transformation is leaving household names in its wake while creating unlimited opportunities for others. Why is it becoming so hard to survive for many established players? Much of it has to do with the speed of the changes taking place and failure to shift to the mindset required for a new […]
Silos – Overcoming the Enemy of Digital Transformation
If organizations need to learn anything today it’s how to overcome silos. Silos are the number one enemy of productivity and competitiveness, especially in digital transformation. They also seriously threaten the quality of life of employees. An article by former Navy Seal Chris Fussell ‘The battlefield experience that made me realize the danger of silos and isolated […]
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 […]
The Silo Peril and Breaking Down Barriers
“For those languishing at the bottom of a silo, there may be no way out.” This was the chilling conclusion of The Economist’s review of the book ‘The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers’ by Gillian Tett. There is little doubt in our minds that silos and silo mentality are among the […]
Freedom from the Trap of Silos through a Network of Projects
Many organizations still have traditional hierarchies and silo their people into functions. But the complexity of today’s reality needs something different. With the exponential growth of interconnections and interdependencies, a traditional organizational design can undermine productivity and sustainable growth. Here we summarize the organizational design we propose, based on two decades of international work, specifically applied to […]
