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 […]
Logical Problem Solving Is Never Enough
Every day we are faced with problems that need solving, both personal and organizational. The more complex the problem the more we need to be sure we have a robust way to analyze what’s wrong so we can generate and effectively implement an appropriate solution. That may sound obvious, but how many decision makers actually […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Digital Transformation and Systemic Change Management
Dr. W. Edwards Deming used to say: “The only thing that does not require maintenance is obsolescence”. 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. We’ve been looking at […]
Digitalization Needs Cooperation: Start Transforming the Enterprise for the Digital Future
Digitalization will inevitably lead organizations to shift their way of working in radical ways. For example, according to Gartner senior VP Dale Kutnick in a recent article, digitalization will require: business development; the IT department and the product management or engineering team – to work together at an unprecedented level of cooperation”. How can that […]
