Harold Jarche has a controversial slide cast this week titled “Subversive thoughts” which explores the relationship between the trends for supporting knowledge work, and the role of management as it is traditionally defined. Continue reading
Is your organization running too smoothly? Is everything being handled with a minimum of fuss? Perhaps you need a ‘Business Crisis Inducer’ is a tool that causes randomized crisis events to challenge your organization. Sound crazy? It is not as crazy as you might first think. Continue reading
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
John Hagel wrote a good review of Nassim Taleb’s book “Antifragile“. Hagel’s book “The Power of Pull” describes a shift in the world from push systems to pull systems. The push system is the epitome of formalize, automated systems. The kind of system that was designed by someone with what I call “enlightenment bias”. They attempt to anticipate everything that might happen, and provide well considered options for it. 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
Thinking Matters 