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Category Archives: Change

From Machines to Plants: Wandering in The Gardens of Democracy

Posted on August 21, 2012 by David

In The New Ecology of Leadership I draw an extended, disciplined analogy between the cycle of an ecosystem (my favourite is a fire-dependent, lodge-pole pine forest) and the trajectories that organizations follow as they go through their lives. The objective … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged complex systems, destruction, ecological perspective, ecology, economics, Eric Liu, Gardenbrain, Gardens of Democracy, government, hedge-funds, Machinebrain, means and ends, Nick Hanauer, politics, Second Enlightenment, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off

Shareholder Value – Part II: “Down with Shareholder Value”

Posted on August 14, 2012 by David

In Saturday’s New York Times, Joe Nocera wrote a column entitled “Down With Shareholder Value”. In it he traced briefly the rise of the concept and then suggested that we are at the “dawn of a new movement”, although it … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, creation, destruction, ecology, fire, forest, Harvard Business Review, Jay Lorsch, Joe Nocera, Justin Fox, lodgepole pine, Neil Sheehan, New York Times, shareholder value model, Vietnam War, World War II | Comments Off

Is “Shareholder Value” a Myth or a Tool for Corporate Euthanasia?

Posted on August 7, 2012 by David

I have been reading Lynn Stout’s The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations and The Public. It is a short, highly readable book, written with the objective of demolishing what Professor Stout calls the “shareholder value … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged bankruptcy, boards, corporate law, directors, Dodge v. Ford, ecological perspective, innovation, liquidation, Lynn Stout, Mitt Romney, principal-agent, purpose, shareholder value model | 2 Comments

Recipe for Ruin: Nothing Lasts Unless It Is Incessantly Renewed

Posted on July 31, 2012 by David

Over the weekend a comment on a management blog referred to a piece by management writer Steve Denning in Forbes magazine. Entitled “The Key Missing Ingredient in Leadership Today”, it argued that real leadership is all about transforming systems, not … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Apocalypse Now, bureaucracy, coercive bureaucracy, complex systems, context, creativity, crisis, Denning, Deresiewicz, destruction, discipline, ecological perspective, enabling bureaucracy, Forbes, Francis Ford Coppola, freedom, Heart of Darkness, hierarchy, identity, innovation, Joseph Conrad, know-how, know-what, means and ends, modular, narrative, power, renewal, ruin, Toyota Production System, West Point | Comments Off

Why Walmart is Like a Forest: Excerpt from The New Ecology of Leadership published in Strategy+Business

Posted on July 10, 2012 by David

An excerpt from The New Ecology of Leadership has just been published in Strategy+Business. It draws the parallels between the growth of the Walmart stores and forest succession, suggesting that it is fundamentally an ecological process. You can read the excerpt here.

Posted in Change, General | Tagged bribery, context, ecology, forest succession, stores, The New Ecology of Leadership, Walmart | Comments Off

Renewal in the West: Nature Bats Last

Posted on July 3, 2012 by David

This year the annual fire season has come early to the Western regions of North America. In the southern mountains it has been prompted by a reduced snowpack, low rainfalls, blistering heat and low humidity. In the north, where the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged California wildfire, Cedar Fire, chaparral, destruction, ecocycle, ecological perspective, fire, fire season 2012, fire-dependent, human community, lodgepole pine, mountain pine beetle, nature bats last, San Diego, Santa Ana wind, serotiny, Western forest | Comments Off

Obama and Romney: Prisoners of the System?

Posted on June 19, 2012 by David

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at a conference in Las Vegas where I was speaking. The meeting was put on by the Applied Finance Group (AFG), a financial consulting company who create sophisticated corporate valuation models for … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged addiction, Barack Obama, Clinton incrementalism, Congress, corruption, creative destruction, dependency, East Coker, ecological perspective, economic rents, Facebook, flat tax, gift economy, House of Representatives, Instagram, Lawrence Lessig, Milton Friedman, Mitt Romney, Republic Lost, Ronald Reagan, rootstriker, Senate, social traps, sunset clause, The New Ecology of Leadership, Thoreau, TS Eliot | Comments Off

Seeing The World With New Eyes

Posted on June 12, 2012 by David

A few weeks ago I put on a seminar in New York City, kindly hosted by Kaihan Krippendorf. Kaihan is a management strategist, speaker and author who helps organizations “outthink” their competition. He is also an expert blogger for Fast … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Marcel Proust, naive, new eyes, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off

Catch 22: The Anatomy of a Social Trap

Posted on June 5, 2012 by David

Joseph Heller’s best-selling, satirical novel, Catch-22, gets it name from the self-contradicting circular logic that the book’s protagonist, Captain John Youssarian encounters while on active service as a B-25 bombardier during World War II. This was the logic that prevented … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged complex systems, fund returns, pension funds, public service, social traps, sustainability | Comments Off

The Spirit of Capitalism: the Quakers and the First Industrial Revolution

Posted on May 29, 2012 by David

The ecological model in The New Ecology of Leadership shows enterprises as being conceived in passion and born in communities of trust and practice. My insights into this dynamic were first guided by my discovery of the Society of Friends, … Continue reading →