Useful: Dave Snowden on resilience

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership

While preparing a proposal for a series of leadership workshops on resilience, I came across this list of seven characteristics of resilience in an older post by Dave Snowden: They've probably changed, but I thought they were useful nonetheless. Original text in italics. For a system to be resilient it must be capable of dynamic re-organisation […]

Complexity, snake-oil and silver bullets

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin

I just returned from a trip to London to experience the updated 4-day Cognitive Edge accreditation training and to meet some of the CE'rs I've known virtually for many years (like Michael Cheveldave and Peter Stanbridge) face to face. Several new ideas were introduced, probably the biggest one being the renaming of the simple domain of […]

Regime Shifts: a new way to think about culture change?

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership

Towards the end of last year I attended a Complexity Forum hosted by the Center for Studies in Complexity in Stellenbosch. There were academics, researchers and practitioners from many different disciplines, and it was fascinating to hear so many different perspectives on complexity. A dominant theme that emerged was around the concept of resilience. It […]

Building the adaptive core of your organisation

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation, Meaning and purpose, Narrative

A discourse that has been gaining prominence in business nowadays is around adaptive and resilient organisations. Some of the world's leading business thinkers like Prof Gary Hamel are making the case for adaptive capacity as being critical for businesses today. In this HBR article the authors speak of Adaptive Advantage as the new competitive edge. Similarly, resilience has been […]

Workshops with Prof Dave Snowden in Jhb & Cape Town (October 2013)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation, Leadership, Narrative

As promised in an earlier post, here are the details for the various public workshops taking place with Dave Snowden in October. In Gauteng: 1. A full day workshop at Worldsview Academy in Johannesburg on 17 October with a focus on complexity & leadership Find out more about it here 2. A half day workshop at […]

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 […]

Complexity, Modeling & Natural Resource Management

Complexity and adaptive leadership

With the publication of our article on Complexity, Modeling & Natural Resource Management in the Ecology & Society journal, a process that started in 2011 has finally been concluded. As mentioned in a previous post, I was one of two complexity practitioners who co-authored two academic papers with some of the leading academic thinkers in […]

Fostering complexity thinking

Complexity and adaptive leadership

I am really excited that after a long and pretty tedious process two peer reviewed articles I co-authored with a bunch of heavy-weight academics have finally been published. Both articles form part of a special feature on Applied Research for Enhancing Human Well-Being and Environmental Stewardship: Using Complexity Thinking in Southern Africa. The academic publication process […]

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 […]

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Blog - Category: Complexity and adaptive leadership