How do we manage an organization to cope with complexity? It means understanding the organization as a system and seeing the interdependencies. Independence vs. interdependence What can the theory of systems tell us about managing organizations? First of all, if all the components that make up the system are independent, then the maximum result that the system can produce is simply […]
You Can’t Cut Through Complexity – KPMG Got It Wrong
KPMG has the tagline “Cutting through Complexity” which suggests they really don’t understand complexity at all. In order to deal with complexity, we first have to understand it, and then we can manage it. How? What does complexity actually mean? “Complexus”, the Latin word for “complex”, roughly means “twisted together”. In other words, when several elements come […]
Free Yourself and Your Organization from Limiting Beliefs
Every individual, business and organization experiences the sensation of getting stuck at some point. They know they are capable of doing more, even significantly more, but they don’t know how. We learn from the Theory of Constraints that this situation of blockage is an opportunity. It is created not by what is real but what […]
Nothing Is the Same: How to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Market
This month marks ten years since the start of the 2007 financial crisis. Our economic models have failed us. Anyone who has lived with the aftermath of that crisis knows that. Many have lost their jobs, or lost their investments and even their future prospects. Many who expected to have a smooth career path are getting […]
How a CIO Can Learn to Drive Real Business Results
Ideally, the role of the CIO should be to manage the Quality of how humans and technology interact to produce real business results. In reality, CIOs today find themselves constrained in what they can achieve operationally. On the one hand, they need to be able to improve business performance. This leads them to want to […]
How Can Systems Thinking Help Organizations?
Question: I have an organizational situation that I need to address and I’m not sure how to go about it. I’ve been hearing a lot about something called systems thinking and I’m interested in understanding what it is and how I benefit from it addressing the situation at hand. Your thoughts on how to pursue […]
Growth Mindset – Cultivating this Key Element of Success
“Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.” From The Talmud Do you feel as if you’re stuck the way you are or do you feel that you can grow? A book by a Stanford psychologist identifies a “fixed mindset” and a “growth mindset.” Depending on your mindset, […]
MBAs – Are They Killing Our Economy?
Dr. Deming said it years ago – MBAs teach students to raid companies, not to manage them. In her new book Makers & Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business, Rana Foroohar, assistant managing editor at Time, points a finger at business education. She states that in spite of the increase in people studying […]
Holacracy vs. Hierarchy? Try Managing Complexity
We recently saw introduced the notion of Holacracy in discussions about an innovative IT platform. Holacracy removes traditional managers and job titles. Zappos introduced it in the belief that this new structure would allow them to grow in a way that is less rigid and bureaucratic. While this may be a move in the right […]
How to Predict the Future in Uncertain Times Part 2
In Part Two of this article on predicting the future with science, we look at the tool from Statistical Process Control that helps us understand behaviour patterns in our processes so we can make more informed decisions. When is a process predictable? We say that a process is “predictable” when it is in a state […]
