Rhythm, ritual and boundaries

“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” ― Tuli Kupferberg A few weeks ago, I wrote about what I experienced as the “strange in-between”, knowing that everything has changed, but still feeling as if nothing has changed. So much has changed since then. As we enter our third week of lockdown here in South […]

Navigate Complexity: Three Habits of Mind

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Leadership

Too much of our understanding of complexity is intellectual. There is very little that embodies what complexity philosopher Edgar Morin would term “lived complexity”.

7 lessons I've learnt consulting as a "complexity practitioner"

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Learning Out Loud, Methods and practices

I've now been using a complex and emergent approach to consulting for around 17 years. A friend of mine read me his coaching "manifesto" recently including his approach to internal change consulting. It made me think about what I've learnt about using this approach so I decided it might be useful to reflect on them […]

7 Differences between complex and complicated

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Leadership, Resilience

Decision-makers commonly mistake complex systems for simply complicated ones and look for solutions without realizing that ‘learning to dance’ with a complex system is definitely different from ‘solving’ the problems arising from it. – Roberto Poli Many people believe that complexity is just higher order complicatedness i.e. that there is a continuum and that the difference […]

Why we suck at "solving wicked problems"

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Metaphor, Uncategorized

Problems: Wicked, complex, intractable, or adaptive … whatever we choose to call them, we seem to suck at solving them and we often get profoundly overwhelmed and stuck. I believe the reason for this is hidden in the language I used in the title and previous sentence (… and no it's not the adjectives ... […]

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 […]

3 pieces of advice for leading a system turn around (especially for our new SA President)

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Leadership, Uncategorized

“We incline to see history through the lives of great men. That inclination blinds us to the real complexity …” - John Kay, Obliquity Ever since his election as South Africa's new president, my news feed has been filled with posts from people telling Cyril Ramaphosa what his priorities should be. He faces a seemingly […]

Dave Snowden at TedX: A succinct overview of his groundbreaking work

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Narrative, sensemaker

I first met Dave in 2002 when we were both employed by IBM. I remember experiencing an immediate resonance with his work, especially the inherent integrity of honoring context and not mindlessly applying best-practice recipes as the big consultancies tend to do. It is now 16 years later, and it has been a privilege to […]

Levers, blueprints and roadmaps: 3 tips to combat "dark" metaphors

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Metaphor, Metaphorology

For those who follow me, it’s probably become apparent that I have a love for metaphors and analogies. Because much of what I do involves introducing others to new concepts, I find them to be useful “hooks”, linking the new idea to something familiar, thereby providing a “scaffold of mind” while understanding grows. Because of this, […]

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Blog - Category: Change