Every kind of organization aspires to achieve its goal with increasing effectiveness. In order to do so, it has to do two fundamental things: grow innovate It has to grow because every living organism is either growing or its dying. It has to innovate because the reality it interacts with is constantly evolving. To […]
Fear in the Workplace – How to Drive it Out
Most organizations were created and are still managed by people whose cognitive skills and careers have been formed in a pre-digital era. This means people that work in them are measured and managed by people who developed their careers according to the mindset and mechanisms of the pre-digital reality. How can we make sure that valuable […]
Enjoy the Process of Improvement- You Were Made For It
We talk a lot about processes at Intelligent Management. That’s because well-designed and well-managed processes are the bedrock of Quality and healthy organizations. But it’s more than that. Processes require constant attention and continuous improvement. In case that begins to sound like a treadmill, let’s remember something very important and fundamental for our lives: we can […]
Variation and a Playbook for Organizations
As superbowl excitement rises, lessons can be learned from a team like the Patriots. They have the most systemic approach to football of any team and their consistent choice of players that other teams reject shows their dependence on their playbook, in other words, carefully mapped interdependencies that work towards achieving the goal. The team […]
We Don’t Need Management Techniques – We Need Knowledge
The internet abounds with techniques and tips, giving the illusion that in a short amount of time it’s possible to master the answers to our problems. That may be true for, say, getting the most from a laptop. However, if we rely on ‘management techniques’ and ‘management by tips’ for running a business or launching a startup, […]
Management Education: Updating Learning for the Age of Complexity
The major problem managers face today is complexity, and the current business degrees and 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. In our previous post we proposed a solution for organizational […]
Hierarchy: Transforming into Something that Works Better
Traditional style hierarchies are no longer appropriate for today’s markets. Our world is changing too fast and the prevailing style of management that creates silos cannot react quickly enough. What is a realistic alternative? We receive a wealth of comments and questions about our work on developing a systemic way of working. A recent long […]
New Thinking Skills: Learn to Connect the Dots
What would happen if we all embraced a systemic vision of the world, if we all started thinking and acting with a systemic awareness, if we learned how to connect the dots? What if we taught children and students to see opportunities that otherwise would not be visible, to anticipate and defuse negative implications? What if we trained […]
Why and How to Build a Purpose-Driven Organization
An increasing number of organizations are talking about purpose. Purpose is the reason for which something exists. But when people talk about purpose they don’t just mean a goal. They mean purposefulness, a deeper meaning, a higher purpose. This is what some call the purpose economy, one that is geared towards good and the social and […]
Divisiveness: What Companies Can Do About It
Divisiveness is one of the most negative forces we face, whether it be at the level of individuals or nations. It is paradoxical that there is so much divisiveness in the world today when we have unprecedented technological means for connection. Polarization is increasing, creating an ever greater divide between the haves and have nots […]
