Tag Archives: creativity

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When the Science is Uncertain, Turn to the Humanities

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 on When the Science is Uncertain, Turn to the Humanities

BREXIT: A Study in Complexity

British politics is in a real mess. Mired in the Brexit debate, its current predicament is best captured in the poetry of the Victorian writer Matthew Arnold; “Wandering between two worlds, the one dead, the other powerless to be born.” … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Brexit, change, community, complex adaptive systems, complex systems, creativity, David Cameron, ecocycle, ecological perspective, identity, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, leadership, Matthew Arnold, Nigel Farage, Theresa May, Tory, UKIP, utility | Comments Off on BREXIT: A Study in Complexity

Cattle, Slaves and Automobiles: Driving Dangerously With Management Clichés

Language is rooted in metaphor. In their popular book, Metaphors We Live By (1982) George Lakoff and Mark Johnson showed the pervasive role that our embodied experience plays in our understanding of how the world works, or might work. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Cartesian, causality, change, complex systems, creativity, George Lakoff, Gilbert Ryle, innovation, language, Mark Johnson, metaphor, Newtonian | Comments Off on Cattle, Slaves and Automobiles: Driving Dangerously With Management Clichés

The VW Debacle: How Large Successful Organizations and Institutions Can Become “Bad Barrels” And What To Do About It

The outlines of Volkswagen’s comprehensive program to defeat national auto emissions laws are becoming clearer. According to the New York Times the company began installing software designed to cheat on emissions test in 2008, when they realized that their new … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Alex Gorsky, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Aristotle, change, complex systems, context, creativity, crisis, destruction, diesel emissions, ecological perspective, efficient cause, General Motors, gun control, hip joints, ignition locks, J&J, Johnson & Johnson, material cause, means and ends, Risperdal, shareholder value, Volkswagen debacle, Winterkorn | 1 Comment

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

A Theory and a Hammer: Managing With Incentives (Part II)

I spent the past week teaching a leadership class at the Kenneth Levene Graduate School of Business at the University of Regina. At the same time my HBR blog “Is Management Due For a Renaissance” has been attracting continuing comment … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Alfie Kohn, change, complex systems, context, creativity, Jack Welch, means and ends, Peter Drucker, purpose, Sears Roebuck, Steve Denning, telos | Comments Off on A Theory and a Hammer: Managing With Incentives (Part II)

Exploring The Ecology of Leadership: the Power of Analogical Thinking

I spent the past week in California working with a senior management team from a large global corporation as part of their extensive executive development program. This was my third time with the same organization and I had worked hard … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abduction, alignment, analogical thinking, analogy, change, choice, commitment, complex systems, creativity, crisis, direction, ecocycle, ecological perspective, executive development, image, leadership culture, Leadership Metaphor Explorer, metaphor, narrative, The New Ecology of Leadership, Visual Explorer, wicked systems | Comments Off on Exploring The Ecology of Leadership: the Power of Analogical Thinking

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

T-shaped People: Deduction, Induction, Abduction and Systems Thinking

IDEO, the design and innovation firm, prizes what they call “T-shaped” individuals. These are people with a deep expertise in one field or domain (the vertical stroke of the “T”) and some expertise across several, often dissimilar, domains (the horizontal … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abduction, analogical, analytical, bottom-up, Charles Sanders Peirce, complex systems, creativity, deduction, ecological perspective, IDEO, induction, innovation, leveraged action, systems, T-shaped, thinking, top-down | Comments Off on T-shaped People: Deduction, Induction, Abduction and Systems Thinking

The Buzz of Entrepreneurs: Hunting Dynamics Part II

Last week I blogged about the virtues of organizations with “hunting dynamics” – networks that could spread themselves out across an opportunity space to explore for opportunities that come and go in unpredictable ways. Once a resource is discovered, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged change, community, complex systems, consensus, context, creativity, democracy, ecological perspective, ecosystem, Edison, entrepreneur, fission-fusion, forager, honeybees, hunting dynamics, innovation, leadership, passion, quorum, slime mould, story, The New Ecology of Leadership, Thomas Seeley | 1 Comment ← Older posts