Tag: Business transformation

  • Perhaps it’s time for a different approach?

    Perhaps it’s time for a different approach?

    “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”

    Peter Drucker

    The more complicated the organization, the more difficult it is to understand what is really happening within and for the customer. Perhaps it’s time to simplify our approach and focus on cooperation and collaboration?

    More than 2 million people have watched Yves Morieux’s Ted Talk; How too many rules at work keep you from getting things done. I invite you to watch and consider the key message and simplicity of cooperation and how this principal can cut through complexity, cost and a disengaged workforce.

    “Modern work — from waiting tables to crunching numbers to designing products — is about solving brand-new problems every day, flexibly and collaboratively. But as Yves Morieux shows in this insightful talk, too often, an overload of rules, processes and metrics keeps us from doing our best work together. Meet the new frontier of productivity: cooperation.” (Ted July 2015)

  • Thoughts on explaining complexity vs. the complicated

    Thoughts on explaining complexity vs. the complicated

    Simple problem

    Baking a cake. To be successful you need a recipe and a belief that the recipe is tried, tested and accurate. No particular expertise is required, however cooking experience probably increases success rate. It’s important that you follow the recipe precisely as it has been tested many times before. If you do so the results are you will end up with a cake.

    Complicated problem

    Sending a rocket to the moon involves multiple recipes, formulae and procedures that are specified and must be followed in an exact order. If you follow procedures, over time there is an increased predictability of success. Each rocket increases the likelihood of the next being just as successful, because there are fewer and fewer variables and less unpredictable events.

    Complex problem

    Raising a child…. a possibility that emerges into something wholly unpredictable. Believe me, I speak from personal experience…

    Raising a child is less predictable, and raising two or more even more so. Following rigid protocols in child rearing may have limited application and may also be counterproductive. Why? Because every child is unique and must be understood as an individual. The environment that they grow up in will be different from the other children (e.g. birth order and environment at school/mix of friends/different teachers/different hobbies…).

    Raising one child provides experience, but provides no guarantees the same approach will work with the next child. As a parent you remain uncertain of the outcome throughout the process because you can’t separate the parts from the whole, the child from its environment. The essence of raising a child may have some ingredients of systems, structures and protocols, but it’s the relationship between people, experiences and moments in time…what this means is the future is unpredictable.

    Complicated & Complex Systems adapted from Tanser 2018 & Zimmerman 1999

    Multiply up the variables to the scale of an organisation, try to codify and control everything that goes on, and your supercomputer brain will start to fail. 

    How would you define your organisation? Simple, complicated or complex? How are you navigating your through your situation? Often the most complex systems utilise the simplest of rules to navigate through complexity.