An article in ‘Business Insider’ this month revisits what it’s like to work at Amazon. While there may have been some improvement since the 2015 NYT article that referred to a bruising culture and people crying at their desks, there still seems to be evidence of exploitation. There is only one kind of exploitation in organizations […]
Managing Risk through a Leverage Point (constraint) – A Systems View
In our last post Understanding Uncertainty and Systemic Risk in Organizations we explained how management must involve the management of variation. Every single process, relationship and communication in our organization, whether we are aware of it or not, is affected by variation. If we ignore variation then we are not managing, and if we are not […]
Understanding Uncertainty and Systemic Risk in Organizations
If we could predict the outcome of everything we do with mathematical certainty, then our lives would be much simpler. In reality, we exist within a complex web of interdependencies and such certainty is not possible. Hence, we live with uncertainty and its inevitable companion: risk. We perceive a risk any time we feel that […]
Managing Risk and Fear
No one can deny that risk exists. It’s the potential to lose something of value. It would be irresponsible to ignore it. The question becomes, what kind of decisional practice and behaviors are operationally and economically effective when it comes to risk in organizations? Operating from fear An article in Mashable about Google+ is a […]
Design and Manage Your Organization as a Whole System or Underperform
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 an organization is in fact a whole system. Everything inside is interconnected and interdependent, so when we try and manage them any differently we inevitably underperform. By not […]
The Quality Conundrum and the Heritage of W. Edwards Deming
In a recent article in Auto News about the demise of Toyota president, Tatsuro Toyoda, they state that Toyoda “earned an MBA from New York University, where he studied under the famed quality-control guru W. Edwards Deming.” Deming is perhaps one of the most quoted and yet misunderstood leaders in management thinking and practice, and […]
Out of Control: Why We Must Transform Organizations Now
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 […]
Creating Sustainable Prosperity – a Practical Proposal
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 we need to create is sustainable prosperity. What if there were something that […]
Achieving Laser Focus in a Meeting the Systemic Way
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 […]
The Leaders We Need for Flatter Organizations
A leader is someone who connects with something deep inside you and brings out the leader in all of us. Ghandi, Churchill, 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 […]
