A client embarking on a pattern of transformation through systemic management recently asked ‘How soon will I be able to use the software to manage the company?’ It’s tempting to think that by buying and ‘installing’ the right software, a company can magically acquire a whole new way of operating that will lead to more […]
Design Thinking and the Power of a Systemic Thinking Tool
We were asked to contribute to a workshop for post-graduate students from diverse backgrounds who co-create an interdisciplinary design strategy under the guidance of a faculty of professional designers and architects. As Systemic Thinkers who work with the Decalogue Methodology, what can we share with these students? That the final product of our design effort should be a […]
How Can Organizations Adapt for Unprecedented Speed?
The challenges facing organizations today are rapid, complex and unknown. They struggle to read the stimuli, absorb them and react within a timeframe that is now necessary. That is because their design and leadership model is still rooted in an outdated, mechanical understanding of reality. How can organizations adapt? The hierarchical functional model is failing […]
The New Leadership Skills for Complexity
If Business Schools are churning out people with the skills that are not adequate for today’s complex world, how do we prepare people to work with complexity? It’s not enough to berate the fact that Business Education is lagging behind. We need to find a valid replacement. What kind of education will serve people to […]
How Can We Solve the Urgent Crisis in Project Management?
How many things in our lives are affected by poor project management? We probably can’t even imagine. Time, resources and money are wasted every day around the globe when projects fail to deliver. When it comes to IT, this is an urgent problem. Our lives depend increasingly on software and digitalization is causing that dependence […]
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 […]
True Innovation: How to Do It
What exactly is innovation? One thing it is not is “a good idea”. There are plenty of good ideas in the world but that is not enough to build a project, let alone a start-up. And yet it happens. Time, money and resources are invested in “good ideas” that do not have legs and so […]
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 […]
Brainware for Conflict Resolution and Building Peace and Prosperity
A brief scan of headlines today led to reading some alarming news. The USA has been downgraded from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy” (see Fortune article) and Mikhail Gorbachev made the statement in Time Magazine “It all looks as if the world is preparing for war.” Never take peace for granted Temperatures are rising in the world, politically […]
Protecting Projects from Chaos: A Tool
Projects can easily get out of hand. They are subject to the chaos that can arise when human interactions are not governed by precise guidelines. Entropy exists and it affects behaviours as well everything else. When we use the Transition Tree Tool to break projects down into actions we are protecting projects from chaos: at […]
