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 […]
MBAs – Are They Killing Our Economy?
Dr. Deming said it years ago – MBAs teach students to raid companies, not to manage them. In her new book Makers & Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business, Rana Foroohar, assistant managing editor at Time, points a finger at business education. She states that in spite of the increase in people studying […]
Your Job as a Leader/Manager? Reduce Variation
They may not be teaching this in MBAs, but a company is a complex system ruled by non-linear interactions that make it difficult to make any prediction when any change is effected. That’s why any approach to improve the company has to be “holistic”, i.e. address the whole system, and consider all the interactions/interdependencies. What is […]
A Business Management Software Can Never Run Your Company
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 […]
Forget Perfection and Pursue Quality – Relentlessly
In our last post, we looked at eliminating toxic beliefs that choke organizations. In this post, we focus in on the toxic belief of wanting perfection, and how this relates to the serious business of Quality. Perfection – an unattainable goal One of the toxic beliefs people have is that perfection equals success. This is […]
Words and Variation: Eliminate Misunderstanding
We all use words all the time. The problem is, the same word can have a variety of meanings for different people. If we want work to go smoothly it’s important to make sure that people can understand each other. People who learn English in the UK and America all learn ‘English’ but there are […]
Variation in Processes: The Time it Takes to Sell
Everything we do in an organization can be considered as a process. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: whether we realize it or not, every process is affected by variation. We need to understand and manage this phenomenon of variation in processes if we want to achieve the best results. Let’s look at […]
What Is Variation and Why Can’t Leaders and Managers Ignore It?
Asking somebody to lead or manage without knowledge of variation in our opinion is like asking them to sail a boat without a rudder. That’s an observation based on 20 years of working with organizations and witnessing the effects of managing (or not managing) variation. We’ve been asked to explain some more about variation following our post […]
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 […]
Time Constraints? Try This…
If you’re looking for a way to increase your productivity, and most of us are, you can take some powerful inputs from the Theory of Constraints. Every day, we all have to perform a number of tasks in different areas of our lives. Clearly, we can’t give equal attention to everything, so how can we […]
