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 […]

Enabling agility: reflecting on the role of heuristics

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Resilience

I've been doing a lot of work lately working with organisations to build strategic agility and resilience to continuous change. This has caused much reflection on what potential enablers might be for strategic agility and distributed decision-making in this increasingly complex and volatile world. I've come to believe that one of the key enablers is an understanding of […]

Enabling (vs mandating) change

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

One of the intractable problems that seem face most companies is effecting real and lasting change across the entire organisation. Many organisations are littered with failed change initiatives and more and more it seems that traditional change management methodologies are failing. Most large organisations seem to be profoundly stuck when it comes to enabling change; plagued with stories […]

The story of SenseMaker® in UNDP Eastern Europe and CIS

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Narrative, sensemaker

A very useful blog by Tony Quinlan posted on the Cognitive Edge site. The real value is in following the links and reading about the various UNDP Sensemaker® sites. The story of SenseMaker® in UNDP Eastern Europe and CIS.

Believing you're in chaos can become a self-fullfilling prophecy

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin

One of my new favorite things to do is facilitating Cynefin 101 workshops within my corporate clients. It allows me to be quite provocative and disruptive (which I've started enjoying of late), and I love seeing "the lights come on" when people get it. The interactions between attendees can also be pretty illuminating. A week or […]

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 […]

Maintain diversity and redundancy (Building resilience: Principle 1)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Leadership, Resilience

"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 […]

Building resilience: what organisations can learn from social ecologists

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership

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 […]

What I believe to be true about organisational culture

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Narrative

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 […]

Reflections on the 'edginess' of change

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Metaphor

I was part of a "real play" scenario (you play yourself i.e. how would you respond in the scenario, vs playing a role) the other day, to demonstrate a wonderful coaching modality called ORSC. The scenario we were playing out was one of a large and established insurer who had aquired a small, agile and innovative […]

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Blog - Category: Complexity and adaptive leadership