When things get complicated in organizations, we can be tempted to “break them up” to try and simplify. Divide and conquer. That just makes matters worse. Why? Because organizations are in fact whole systems. Everything inside is interconnected and interdependent, so when we try and manage them any differently we inevitably underperform. By not seeing […]
Losing Control: Why We Must Transform Organizations Today
Our world has changed. Especially since the global financial crisis. Our reality is complex, that means it’s dense with interconnections and interdependencies that we cannot ignore. We can’t just think about what goes on inside our organizations (complicated enough) but how they interact with and impact stakeholders and entire supply chains. It’s hardly surprising so many managers feel […]
The Secret of Sustainable Wealth? It’s Not What You Think
Most people would like to be rich. After all, isn’t that the secret to happiness? The fact that in the wealthy First World increasing numbers of people struggle to get by, never mind thrive, is a major conundrum of our times. What if there were something that every single one of us can do to help? […]
How We Achieved Laser Focus and Acceleration in One Meeting (with a Prerequisite Tree )
I recently participated in a meeting for an innovative digital project where speed is now of the essence. We were able to surface assumptions that saved us endless conversations, weeks of delay and false starts based on misunderstandings. In that meeting I saw in action, yet again, the power of a Thinking Process Tool from the […]
Leaders For Transformation: The Power of Breakthrough
At Intelligent Management we work beyond improvement; our goal is to inspire and highlight a path to transformation. To transform what? The prevailing silo-based management style into one of system optimization. The word ‘sechel’, the title of one of our books, indicates in Hebrew precisely the intelligence required to achieve this: systemic intelligence, i.e. what […]
The Leaders We Need Today
A leader is someone who connects with something deep inside you and brings out the leader in all of us. Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, these are some of the great leaders of our times. They inspired people to go beyond what they thought they were capable of to achieve something momentous for the […]
Empowerment – How and Why
What do we mean by empowerment and why is it such a tricky matter? What tools can we use to make sure empowerment is done more effectively? In our last post we looked at the transformational nature of the Theory of Constraints. The road to transformation is paved with actions. In any organization, things need […]
The Transformational Power of TOC (Theory of Constraints)
Once you have understood and experienced the transformational power of the Theory of Constraints there is no going back. It changes your life in ways that you might not have imagined. This is true for individuals as much as it is for companies and organizations. Where does that shift come from? Today is the 4th […]
Make Profit or Do Good – Solving the Conflict
When you think of making a profit versus doing good as a conflict, you can quickly get to the root of the problem. Much of it has to do with the way we think about what profit is. When we challenge our understanding of profit, all kinds of new possibilities arise. How do we do that? The […]
Why Every Business Should Be a Social Enterprise
Seth Godin in his blog has just pointed out that everything we do as enterprises, good or bad, impacts our community. We took that concept a step deeper to say that there is no conflict between doing good for the community and making a profit, as described in this excerpt from our new book ‘The Human Constraint’. […]