“The only thing that does not require maintenance is obsolescence”, as W. Edwards Deming used to say. This is a fundamental truth: if we do not evolve, we regress. What makes everything more complicated is the pace at which we must evolve to survive. Technology speeds everything up, including the world of technology itself. Digital […]
Decisions and Change – Thinking Processes for a Complex World
Why is the world today so complex? Because interconnections and interdependencies multiply at an ever-increasing speed. On top of this, we struggle to understand how this new kind of reality works. Every day, we participate in a super intricate ‘network of networks’ but we have a very limited understanding of the underlying properties of these […]
Why Is Managing Change So Hard and How Can We Make it Easier?
Nothing in our world today is quite the same as it was just a year ago. Many people have had to change completely the way they work and live and many will never “return to normal”. Managing change is something that all of us must become familiar with and it has become a fundamental element […]
Changing How We Think Business for the Digital Age
We were recently asked an important question following an article of ours about the dangers of linear thinking: “I can see how organizations could get stuck in one way of thinking as it often happens. How can organizations avoid being linear while forming their strategic plan?” At Intelligent Management we take a systemic view of […]
Why Do We Get Stuck on the Path to Change? The Human Constraint
Why is it so difficult to change, even when we know how to make it happen? Why is it so difficult to embrace newly learned and valid concepts and apply them? There are reasons why people resist change and there are also practical ways to work towards achieving an agreed upon goal. This was part […]
Where Digital Transformation is Taking You and Your Organization
Change is happening fast and everywhere. The familiar is shifting from a physical, tangible world to a reality that is online and digital. Even some of our oldest, even ancient industries like printing and clothes manufacturing are becoming increasingly digitized. What do these changes mean for the business world and where are they taking us? […]
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, Operating and Getting Results with an Enterprise as a Sustainable System
In this post we look at how we can create a sustainable system, how we can operate as a sustainable system, and the results this will help us achieve. What would happen if everyone came to work and just did their own thing? Even with the best of intentions, this would not be a great […]
How to Create a Systemic Strategy
Strategy is about identifying a direction and creating robust solutions to move coherently in that direction. It involves identifying the systemic changes that need to be created. There are three main phases for this: what to change what to change to how to make the change happen For each of these phases, there is […]
Change or Don’t Change? Embracing the Choice
There is a fundamental conflict about change that we all face throughout our lives. If we can verbalize it in a general way, then we have an opportunity to deal with it every time it haunts us. If there is one thing we know we will face in life for certain, it’s change. From day […]
