Reconceptualising organisations: from complicated machines to flowing streams.

agility, Boundaries, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Flow

Too often we still view organisations through a mechanistic lens and this impacts on the flows we pay attention to. If we see them instead as living systems, organisms or ecosystems, it soon becomes clear that flow is central to every aspect of the organisation.

All that jazz ... making coherence coherent

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Future of Work, Healthy organizations, Insights, Leadership, Metaphor, Resilience

One of the assertions I make quite often nowadays, is that we need to move from focusing on alignment, to focusing on coherence. I've found it interesting that out of all the potentially controversial statements I make, this one seems to generate an inordinate amount of questions and disagreement. It is understandable as this notion […]

The peripheral; extravagance; and paradox: Whistler reflections by Renée Koch

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, General musings, Guest blogs, Innovation, Metaphor

I asked my friend Renée Koch, who was a faculty member at the Whistler Retreat earlier this year, to contribute a guest blog reflecting on her experience and learning at the retreat and beyond. I love her focus on the peripheral; extravagance; and paradox. What struck me is how the notion of extravagance again challenges […]

How organisational OCD is stamping out innovation and agility

agility, Change, Cynefin, Innovation

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a debilitating anxiety disorder that can have devastating consequences for the individual that suffers from it. I think there is a similar disorder that organisations suffer from ... I call it Obsessive Certainty Disorder. It too is linked with anxiety and the need for control. And it too has devastating consequences, […]

8 guidelines to enable organisational fluidity

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Cynefin

While preparing for my recent keynote at Agile Africa, I came across the work of Prof Adrian Bejan, a mechanical engineer who contributed to the field of thermodynamics through his constructal law, which is formulated as follows: “For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that […]

Learnings from Whistler: Scaffolding emergence

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Insights, Learning Out Loud, Metaphor, Resilience

In June this year I had the privilege of attending the Cynefin Retreat in Whistler, Canada along with many Cynefin practitioners that up to then, I only knew virtually. The opportunity to finally meet in person was incentive enough to attend, however even that couldn’t compete with the stimulating ideas we engaged with over the […]

Enabling adaptive space

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Innovation, Leadership, Learning Out Loud

I had the privilege this week to co-facilitate an Adaptive Space workshop with Prof Mary Uhl-Bien at a local business school. I’ve long been intrigued by her work, so it was really good to see it applied practically. As always, I’m left with a need to make sense of where it fits into other complexity […]

7 principles to help organisations resist the siren song of copying recipes

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation, Leadership, Metaphor, Resilience

“You can't replicate the end point of an evolutionary process, which by its success has changed the context anyway. However we can seek to copy the starting conditions and enable the emergence of new contextually unique successes that learn from it.” - Dave Snowden “… the fact is, if you don't know what makes things […]

Think like a Chef

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Metaphorology

The trouble is that, in my view, the continual bombardment of quick and simple recipes is doing nothing to teach us how to cook. We are in serious danger of becoming slaves to recipes, rather than having the confidence to be able to walk along a supermarket aisle, or look through fridge and cupboard, to […]

If you want to innovate, don't say so

agility, Cynefin, Metaphor, Methods and practices, Narrative, Teams

"Innovation is not so much about having ideas as it is about making connections" Harold Jarche Last week I had the opportunity to facilitate a week-long "innovation sprint" for Agile 42, an international agile coaching company. After recovering from my time spent facilitating 39 other facilitators (on my own!) I finally had time to reflect on […]

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Blog - Category: agility