Month: March 2015

Maintain diversity and redundancy (Building resilience: Principle 1)

“Systems with many different components (e.g. species, actors, or sources of knowledge) are generally more resilient than systems with few components.  Redundancy provides ‘insurance’ within a system by allowing some components to compensate for the loss or failure of others.  Redundancy is even more valuable if the components providing the redundancy also react differently to … Continue reading Maintain diversity and redundancy (Building resilience: Principle 1)

Building resilience: what organisations can learn from social ecologists

I have been blessed with a very diverse network, which includes among others many renowned thinkers and scientists in the field of social-ecological systems.  I am therefore exposed to thinking that I would otherwise not gain easy access to.  Most of my work happens in the corporate world (although I do get to play with scientists … Continue reading Building resilience: what organisations can learn from social ecologists

What I believe to be true about organisational culture

A client asked me to write down some thoughts about a complexity based approach to culture.  I thought I’d go ahead and publish some of my initial thoughts here as well. (I’ve woven together my own ideas with those of Dave Snowden & Dr Chene Swart – so much credit to them!) Thinking about culture from a … Continue reading What I believe to be true about organisational culture