“For those languishing at the bottom of a silo, there may be no way out.” This was the chilling conclusion of The Economist’s review of the 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 are among the […]
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 […]
The Paradox of Privilege
In a newspaper article this week, ‘Why is Privilege Suddenly Sexy‘, a writer wonders why “the more we are reminded of the sinfulness of privilege the more we wallow in it.” The appeal of the past There can surely be many reasons why, in our times of unprecedented speed of change and social and political upheavals, […]
Complexity and Root Cause Analysis – Where Is the Fit?
We’ve been asked how come we talk about complexity and also root cause analysis. Aren’t they incompatible? The answer is no, and here we explain why root cause analysis is your best friend in managing complex situations and environments. Why complexity and a “reductionist” root cause analysis are not incompatible Let me preface this post […]
An MBA for Complexity?
The major problem managers face today is complexity, and the current MBAs on offer are not equipping their graduates with the right knowledge and tools. Managers today must be able to understand how things interdepend and evolve in order to navigate complexity. Here we offer a solution. Why MBAs are stuck in the past Many business […]
Systemic Organization Management for the Age of Complexity
As this post is being written in Italy where we first set up our firm and where we are visiting for projects, it’s not surprising that we often think about how we first started in the mid 1990s in Milan. Back then, we worked with organizations to transfer Deming’s principles about Quality. It quickly became clear […]
Complexity in Financial and Economic Systems – Adding Clarity
Complexity is all around us, but do we really understand what it means? And how are financial markets and economic systems affected by it? In this post, Dr. Giovanni Siepe takes a systemic perspective. What is a system and what does complexity mean? There are many conversations taking place about complexity and complex systems. In […]
The Danger of False Assumptions – Learn to Think Better
How can people keep thinking something when evidence around them is screaming a different reality? How can we make sure that thinking blocks don’t happen to us? It’s more common that we would like to believe. We may want to be independent thinkers, but we end up following the crowd, arriving at conclusions that are […]
Thinking and Reasoning for Leadership Are Urgently Needed and Can Be Learned
Are we really capable of thinking and reasoning? Even a superficial glance at newspaper articles seem to suggest that we are not exercising these capacities. Joined up thinking is scarce. There is a crisis of leadership as one catastrophic decision after another shapes the lives of workers and citizens. The world is complex Our reality has […]
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 […]
