Although the majority of organizations are divided up into functions and silos (and suffer every day from the ill-effects of that) they are in fact one system. They simply do not see it because of an out of date approach to management based on vertical hierarchy and local optima. What do we mean when we […]
Why Doesn’t Increased Effort Equal Increased Productivity?
People work hard when they care about achieving results in their organization. Sometimes very hard. And yet, why is that no matter how much extra effort they may make, this doesn’t always translate into extra results? In some cases, paradoxically, the harder people work the further they seem to be from where they expect. What’s […]
Pride Comes Before a Fall – A (Systemic) Lesson For Leaders and VW
Being conceited can come from occupying a position of power. It’s easy to convince yourself that if you are in the driving seat it’s because you deserve it, because you are intrinsically better than others. This is a vicious circle of wrong assumptions. If you are rich, you are better than the poor (even though you […]
Strategy Failure: Why We Need A Whole New World
In a recent article about strategy and execution, Roger Martin writes in the Harvard Business Review: “To fix our problem with strategy failure, we need to stop thinking in terms of the brain-to-body metaphor. Instead, we should conceive of the corporation as a white-water river in which choices cascade from the top to the bottom.” […]
From Silos to System: the New Organization 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 […]
Is Your Organization Afflicted by Silo Sickness? Here Are the Symptoms
It’s time to cure the vast array of symptoms of silo sickness in organizations. These symptoms creep up and spread, before people realize where they are coming from. The reason the symptoms spread is because an organization is a living organism, a system. Dividing an organization up artificially into silos not only creates the disease of […]
The Peril of Silos (and what we can do about it)
“For those languishing at the bottom of a silo, there may be no way out.” This is the chilling conclusion of The Economist’s review of a new 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 […]
How Much Truth in ‘House of Lies’?
House of Lies, a riveting award-winning TV series, is a scathing indictment of the world of management consulting. When you strip away the hyper-real excess of lust, luxury, greed and vengeance, what truth, if any, can we find? Beyond the entertainment value, there seems little that is real in the world of management consultant star […]
Perception and Risk
Our brains really struggle to be rational. This is a big problem when it comes to management and making decisions, especially decisions about risk. What can we do about it? The improbability of probability The human mind is unable to process probability. It’s a scientific fact proved over the last 20 years in a slew of publications (and […]
Exploit the Constraint, Not Your People (sorry, Mr Amazon)
The recent articles and surrounding debate about how tough it is to work at Amazon relate to exploitation. There is only one kind of exploitation in organizations that is permissible and useful. And it doesn’t involve crying in the bathroom. Setting the goal Hearing about the bruising behaviour at Amazon, where people allegedly often cry at their […]
