Let’s make a radical statement about success and organizations: all that matters for the success of an organization and those who work within it is speed and reliability. Think about that for a second. How many organizations can actually say that they are designed for this? Isn’t it true that layers of bureaucracy and the […]
Marketing Requires Knowledge and Method, not Techniques
There’s a lot of mystique and myth about marketing (and sales). What are they really? In this post we propose a solid, proven systems approach. Serious marketing leaves no room for improvisation. It requires thought, consistency and relentless effort. The methodical effort translates into consistent, monitorable results with built-in continuous improvement. Marketing is not a “company function” […]
Constraints? Not a Bad Thing
On a client’s website, they rightfully explain that their technology frees their customers of certain constraints. What exactly do we mean by constraints and are they a totally bad thing? We all want more freedom. A constraint would seem, by definition, to be something that robs us of freedom. But what we need to do […]
Exploit the Constraint, Not Your People (sorry, Mr Amazon)
The recent articles and surrounding debate about how tough it is to work at Amazon relate to exploitation. There is only one kind of exploitation in organizations that is permissible and useful. And it doesn’t involve crying in the bathroom. Setting the goal Hearing about the bruising behaviour at Amazon, where people allegedly often cry at their […]
Why We Need to Understand “Constraint” in 21st Century Organizations
Today’s post looks at ways to understand what “constraint” means for an organization and why we need to identify it and manage it in 21st century organizations. This is an extract from the new business novel + website, The Human Constraint. May opened the window of her apartment to let in some fresh air. The […]
Don’t get stuck on thinking blocks. Think again, think better (systemically)
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 […]
How to Manage an Organization through Complexity (Go Patriots)
How do we manage an organization to cope with complexity? It means understanding the organization as a system and seeing the interdependencies, something that the Patriots understand. 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 […]
Don’t Cut Through Complexity: Understand it and Manage It (Sorry, KPMG)
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 […]
Freeing Yourself from Limiting Beliefs
We’re getting ready to launch our new eBook ‘The Human Constraint’, a business novel for the New Economy. We’re excited to share a snippet of the accompanying online learning centre that accompanies each chapter of the novel. This section deals with limiting beliefs and a tool to overcome them. Assumptions and limiting beliefs In a chapter […]
How To Embed Creative Business Thinking In Your Organization
We may think we know how to think, but can we do it better? This post looks at some tools for systematic, creative thinking for business (and beyond). A recent article in the Globe and Mail newspaper asks the question, how can we produce more creative business thinkers? What sort of things should business schools […]
