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 […]

Jungle vs Zoo - Reflections on change and resilience

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Healthy organizations, Innovation, Leadership, Metaphor, Resilience

In my previous post I introduced the analogy of a jungle vs a zoo to help us make sense of the complex contexts we face and the often ordered organisational structures and processes we tend to create. In this post I want to explore this analogy further and look specifically at how change and resilience from the […]

It's hard to survive in the jungle if all you know is the zoo

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Engagement, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Metaphor

I recently posted a tweet that created an unexpected enthusiastic response. It read: “It’s hard to survive in the jungle if you were trained in a zoo” I love using metaphors and analogies to explain the concepts I work with, like the difference between complex (jungle) and complicated or obvious (zoo) contexts. This is one […]

Connectivity or coupling: keep Goldilocks in mind (Building resilience: Principle 2)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Healthy organizations, Resilience

My mother always said that nothing with a "too" in front of it is good. That is certainly true about connectivity, too little and too much can be equally detrimental. High levels of connectivity can facilitate the fast recovery of a system after a disruption, but at the same time some disruptions spread faster in highly […]

The soft stuff has become the hard stuff

Boundaries, Engagement, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Meaning and purpose

The Gallup State of the Global Workplace report was released recently, containing employee engagement results per country. The results are generally pretty dismal, an indictment on the prevailing cultures in our organisations. For sub-Saharan Africa, the report states: In most sub-Saharan African countries, formal employment for an employer is still relatively rare; many residents work at subsistence […]

One sure-fire way to poison your culture

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Healthy organizations, Innovation, Meaning and purpose

Sometimes I come across ideas in business that is just so counter-productive that I really cannot understand how they ever became accepted practice. One such idea that I've seen wreak havoc on corporate culture is the so-called Forced Ranking performance assessment process (or as Jack Welch termed it "Rank & Yank"). In virtually every company […]

The restorative power of meaning

Engagement, Healthy organizations, Meaning and purpose

In an article in the Time magazine (26 June ed), Joe Klein writes poignantly about how regaining a sense of purpose through public service is helping US military veterans and returning troops to find their way again. Some of these men and women suffer from severe PTSD, others are simply struggling to cope with the […]

The tyranny of the moment

Boundaries, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Healthy organizations, Meaning and purpose, Narrative

Warning! This post doesn't contain 7 steps or 12 ideas, nor is it the ideal 600-800 word length ... "The greatest tragedy in using speed as the answer to complexity and the complexities of work-life, is that very soon we cannot recognize anything that is not traveling at the same velocity as we are. We […]

Leadership is about climate control, not command and control

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Metaphor

In a new TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson (embedded below) he focuses on prevailing education systems and how they stifle learning and creativity. He eloquently makes the case that education is not a mechanistic endeavor that is about conformity and compliance, but an inherently human and organic process that is about valuing diversity […]

Work and meaning