The sign of our time is the amazing speed with which changes in the business world happen. This requires from the enterprises of today, and even more of the future to become agile, e.g. capable of adjusting themselves to changes in the surrounding world. Continue reading
One of the better summaries on how companies need to be adaptable is the Harvard Business Review article by Martin Reeves and Mike Deimler called “Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage“. Continue reading
Here is a slidecast version of the talk I gave at BPM Next in March. In 14 minutes it explains the core ideas of antifragility and how learning organizations are antifragile. Mixed in are some surprising details about adaptive systems. This presentation will help explain why a traditional model-and-automate approach is the wrong thing for an innovative, learning organization. Continue reading
The goal of process management is to improve process. Let’s say you are successful at putting in place a process improvement practice. Can there be too much of a good thing? Experts are saying that it can be. Continue reading
Alberto Manuel pushed the boundaries of business process support in his new conference in Lisbon Portugal on April 18, 2013. It was not the typical rehashing of “this standard, that formalism, see the life-cycle, marvel at the sophisticated architecture diagrams”. Instead, he set out to challenge the audience to think not about where we are today, but where this is all taking us, and what might it become. Continue reading
This tidbit of advice (in a list among others) was sent around to managers at my company recently:
Stop micromanaging. Micromanagement is a sign of mistrust. You hired them for a reason. If you don’t trust they will get the job done then by all means, either find people who you think will, or leave them alone to do their jobs.
This is good advice for almost all teams, and certainly for knowledge workers. But isn’t micromanagement exactly what BPM is all about? Maybe, maybe not. Continue reading
For knowledge workers, automating the business process so that the system can “tell them what to do” is the entirely wrong focus for IT system support. The focus of the system should instead be on presenting to knowledge workers the current status of the project, measured a couple of different ways. The distinction is subtle, but important. Continue reading
Continuing the pattern from my past few post on Antifragile concepts, today consider Naive Intervention, that idea assuming that simple model actually represents a complex system can lead to disastrously bad decisions. Continue reading
Jared Diamond spoke at the Commonwealth Club last month. I have always been a huge fan of his Pulitzer prize winning book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” as well as “Collapse” and other works. This talk introduced his new book “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?” The answer: more than you think. Continue reading
Q: When is it easier to ship a $600 electronic device across the country and back, than it is to change a field in a database?
A: When you are a phone company.
This is a true story, and one that perfectly illustrates how IT systems, when implemented, can actually make a company less flexible and less able to cope with unpredictable things. Information technology can actually make a company more fragile. Continue reading
Thinking Matters 