Tag Archives: ecology

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

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

The Ecology of Digital Transformation: Sense-Making in Silicon Valley

I have just returned from a week of “educating” in Palo Alto, where the third residency module of the 2022 De Groote EMBA Digital Transformation was taking place. Palo Alto is, of course, the epicentre of the great disruption known … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged adaptive cycle, banyan, Bildung, ecological perspective, ecology, ecosystem, Goethe, Hannah Arendt, Hewlett-Packard, Holling, narrative, Palo Alto, Peter Drucker, rationality, reason, sequoia, Stanford, Stephen Toulmin, Vernunft, Verstand | Comments Off on The Ecology of Digital Transformation: Sense-Making in Silicon Valley

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

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

Lead Like A Gardener: The Movie

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 →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged adaptive cycle, change, community, complex systems, ecocycle, ecological perspective, ecological rationality, ecology, ecosystem, Henry Mintzberg, leadership, meaning, means and ends, metaphor, mission, narrative, Pope Francis, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Lead Like A Gardener: The Movie

For Innovation – Think Small – Like a Mindful Mollusk!

The story of Inky the octopus made headlines around the world this past week. In case you have been in Outer Mongolia (without the internet) Inky was a male common octopus on exhibit in New Zealand’s National Aquarium on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged 914, Arkansas, Arthur D. Little, Ben Franklin, change, ecology, IBM, Inky, innovation, mindfulness, mollusk, National Aquarium, New Zealand, octopus, Sam Walton, scale, Sear Roebuck, Walmart, Xerox | Comments Off on For Innovation – Think Small – Like a Mindful Mollusk!

Pope Francis and the Environment – Transformational Leadership in Action

A version of this post appeared earlier this year in the blog of the Drucker Society of Europe: To students of management Pope Francis is a fascinating study in leadership and organizational change. From his surprise election as an outsider, … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Uncategorized | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, business schools, crisis, culture, ecology, environment, externalities, faith, GNP, instrumental rationality, modernism, one-dimensional paradigm, Peter Drucker, Pope Francis, power, reason, Roman Catholic Church, science, social and moral development, transformational leadership | Comments Off on Pope Francis and the Environment – Transformational Leadership in Action

Disrupting Disruption Theory (Part II) – Ecological Transformation

This blog is a continuation of last week’s in which I discussed Jill Lepore’s mostly off-target criticisms of HBS professor Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. There I said that my concern with Christensen’s work was his tendency to rely … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged adaptive cycle, Clayton Christensen, context, creativity, destruction, disruption, ecological perspective, ecology, Gunderson, Holling, Jill Lepore, machine, New Brunswick, panarchy, spruce budworm | Comments Off on Disrupting Disruption Theory (Part II) – Ecological Transformation

Climate Change and Evidence-based Management: An Ecological Perspective [Part I]

In the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, British science writer Matt Ridley wrote another one of his provocative essays around his theme of “rational optimism”. [In 2010 Ridley wrote a book, The Rational Optimist, which I reviewed for Strategy+Business.] … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Clayton Christensen, data, ecological perspective, ecology, economics, innovation, judgement, Matt Ridley, Northern Rock, prediction, resources | Comments Off on Climate Change and Evidence-based Management: An Ecological Perspective [Part I]

Fire and Ice: All I want for Christmas is a Sump Pump!

It’s been a horrid two weeks week weather-wise in Southern Ontario. First we had a hard freeze, making it unusually cold for this time of the year, then we had a heavy snowstorm, which dumped about 30 cm of snow … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Christmas, ecology, fire, Holiday, ice, plumbing, pump, renewal, Southern Ontario, sump | 5 Comments

Organic and Mechanical Approaches to Complex Systems

The last week a blog I wrote for the Harvard Business Review and the Drucker Forum was published on the HBR site. It brought together a number of issues that I have been talking about in the past few months … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged change, Cirque du Soleil, constructive, creativity, critical, Drucker Forum, ecological perspective, ecology, engineering, guba, innovation, Iraq, Kim, lincoln, Mauborgne, narrative, philosophy, positives, reverse-engineer, success factors, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Organic and Mechanical Approaches to Complex Systems ← Older posts