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Category Archives: Strategy

Toggling Between Two Worlds: Making Sense of Organizational Change (abridged)

Posted on May 1, 2024 by David

“And twofold always. May God us keep From single vision and Newton’s sleep.” William Blake This is a summary of a longer article I have just posted on Medium to mark forty years since the publication of my first (and … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged adaptive cycle, change, complex systems, context, crisis, destruction, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecology, ecosystem | Comments Off

Podcast “Lead Like a Gardener: An Ecological Approach to Wicked Problems

Posted on February 3, 2022 by David

Last week I did a podcast with Toby Corballis of Wicked Problems. Toby is an agile business transformation specialist based in The Hague in the Netherlands. I had been attracted to his site by his earlier excellent interview with Keith … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Strategy | Tagged adaptive cycle, bureaucracy, complex systems, Dealingwith Darwin, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecology, ecosystem, Geoffrey Moore, hierarchy, narrative, navigating, panarchy, product lifecycle, The New Ecology of Leadership, Toby Corballis, wayfinding, wicked problems | Comments Off

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!

Posted on October 15, 2021 by David

Steven Spielberg’s 1975 movie, Jaws, tells the story of a seaside town whose shores are terrorized by a killer shark. After several fatal attacks, the town sheriff, played by Roy Scheider, sets out to hunt the monster in a dilapidated … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Adrian Wooldridge, change, complex systems, Dofasco, ecological perspective, figure and ground, Gore-Tex, human condition, humanistic management, Jaws, John Micklethwait, leadership, management theory, Peter Drucker, scientific management, Spotify, tensions, W.L. Gore | Comments Off

Austrian Economics and the Ecological Perspective

Posted on September 10, 2020 by David

A few months ago I had the pleasure of meeting Hunter Hastings online. Hunter is an economist by training, a member of the Mises Institute and a follower of the Austrian School of economics. We got to chatting and he … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Austrian School, change, complex systems, ecocycle, Hayek, Mises | Comments Off

When the Science is Uncertain, Turn to the Humanities

Posted on June 15, 2020 by David

On June 17, 2020 from 1pm to 2pm. Eastern Time I will be giving a TED-style talk and hosting a discussion with i4j. The password is i4jcommunity. i4j Innovation for Jobs is a global leadership forum organized by the IIIJ Foundation, … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abstraction.navigatng, analogical inquiry, change, community, complex systems, context, coronavirus, creativity, crisis, destruction, ecocycle, ecological perspective, innovation, leadership, narrative, renewal, wayfinding | Comments Off

The Hammer and The Dance: The Case for Crushing the Coronavirus with Coercive Bureaucracy

Posted on April 23, 2020 by David

Metaphors matter, especially in uncertain times, when the only way to frame a complex predicament is to use models from a familiar past. The title of this blog borrows from Tomas Pueyo’s excellent article and the picture that accompanies it is … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged change, china, cities, coercive bureaucracy, community, complex systems, coronavirus, corporation, dance, destruction, Geoffrey West, Germany, hammer, herd immunity, innovation, mortality, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Tomas Pueyo | Comments Off

True But Useless: Why So Much Management Advice Sucks (and what to do about it).

Posted on January 22, 2020 by David

Why does so much management advice sound reasonable but turn out to be of little value? Most readers will know what I mean. Take the following guidance on how companies can ‘accelerate their agile transformation’: Create a C-suite with an … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abstraction, Alfred North Whitehead, altruism, Aristotle, BSC, budgets, cause-and-effect, complex adaptive systems, Daniel Boorstin, experience, gardeners, gemba, growing people, KPI, Lao-Tzu, management, Mary Parker Follett, MBO, means and ends, measurement, mindset, RONA, selfishness, Stanley McChrystal, Tao Te Ching, truisms | Comments Off

The Engineer and The Gardener: Management Science Versus Complexity Science

Posted on September 3, 2019 by David

Management Science The concept of management as a science has its origins in the aftermath of World War II. During that conflict the use of analytical disciplines drawn from operations research proved enormously useful in decision-making. After the … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Leadership, Strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged Cartesian Theory of Management, change, complex adaptive systems, complex systems, Descartes, Knightian uncertainty, management science, meaning, positivism, pragmatism, Richard Rorty, scentific rationality | Comments Off

Wading Through the Swamp – the Radical Power of Ecosystems-as-Processes

Posted on July 10, 2019 by David

The respected management scholar, Donald Schön, began his 1987 book, The Education of the Reflective Practitioneras follows: “In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground, management problems lend … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged #GPDF19, attractors, complex systems, Descartes, Drucker Forum, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecosystem, ecosystems, emergence, Goethe, meaning, narrative, Peter Drucker | Comments Off

Lead Like A Gardener: The Movie

Posted on April 6, 2019 by David

This is the video of my short plenary presentation at the 10th Annual Global Peter Drucker Forum held in Vienna on November 28 and 19 in Vienna. For all the video from the conference see: Global Peter Drucker Forum 2018 … Continue reading →