Triarchy Press: Changing the organisation

The Einstein of Problem Solving

2009-11-06T08:27:00.003Z

While we collate people's thoughts and memories on and about the late Russell Ackoff, following are excerpts from a lovely piece by Steven Brant in The Huffington Post.

In the weeks before he died, we were working with Russ to publish the 40 or so remaining Management 'f-Laws' that he wrote with Herb Addison. We published the first collection in 2007 and had agreed to publish the remainder alongside an essay about Russ's take on Systems Thinking. With typical punctiliousness, Russ had insisted that we drop a political reference which might, if read in a very poor light, have suggested that he endorsed a particular political party.

We've decided to go ahead with publication of the new book, in part because of what people like Steven Brant are saying about Russ Ackoff and Systems Thinking:

"The world lost a very great man this past Thursday. So great, in fact, that the only person I can compare him to is Einstein. And that's because this man - Russell L. Ackoff, Professor Emeritus of The Wharton School - transformed the world of problem solving just as Albert Einstein transformed he world of science. Russ was my friend and mentor for the last 10 years and was 90 years old when he passed away from complications resulting from hip replacement surgery. His official obituary is here.

Why I compare Russ Ackoff to Albert Einstein

Before Einstein and his fellow physicists made their discoveries early in the 20th Century, the scientific world assumed that our universe was - essentially - a "giant clock." This mechanical view of the universe was made obsolete by the discovery of Quantum Mechanics, through which the universe was redefined as being an interrelated and interconnected series of waves... of patterns of energy. (I'm using short-hand language here.) The bottom line: computers could not exist without Quantum Mechanics, because its principles make possible how computer chips work.

Mechanical view of the universe... no computers. Quantum Mechanics... computers (and a whole lot more). It's that simple.

Well, before Russell Ackoff and his fellow organizational development theorists made their discoveries in the period following WWII, the management world assumed that solving the problem of how to make organizations work better required using Analysis: breaking the problem (the organization) up into its component parts... fixing those parts (including "those people") that were broken... and putting the organization back together, with the expectation that it would then work. This was also a "giant clock" philosophy.

This mechanical view of problem-solving was made obsolete by the development of Systems Thinking, through which making organizations work better was redefined in recognition of the role played by the design of the entire system. Synthesis - the thinking method involving seeing how different elements in a system interact with each other - replaced Analysis as the method of developing breakthrough operational improvements (otherwise known as Innovation).

Innovation comes from looking at whether an entire system can be transformed, not if certain parts of a system can be improved. You don't get from a car to an airplane by just looking at how the car's engine works.

The work of Russ Ackoff and his colleagues codified what had previously been done by people who were innovators naturally (inventors, for example). Previously, how these people thought was not a formally recognized thinking discipline."

Brant then introduces the subject of Systems Thinking and the fact that it has not 'communicated well' with the world outside academe. he goes on to say:

"...the end to Systems Thinking's long period of isolation in an intellectual wilderness may come because the United States appears to be headed for the kind of crisis that has brought about large-scale change in the past.
As I said above, America is tearing itself apart.

As Frank Rich reports in today's New York Times, the Republican Party is progressing steadily down a "road to purity" (led by people such as Sarah Palin and Glen Beck). This will further destroy the already nearly non-existent partnership that exists between the two sides of "the house of America". And as President Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I don't care what the DOW does or what the GDP numbers are in the next quarter. (And please note: BusinessWeek doesn't appear to care about GDP numbers that much anymore either. See "The GDP Mirage" in the latest issue.)

It's the health of our socio-political fabric that determines whether a nation avoids a catastrophic crisis or not. And right now, that health is dropping rapidly.

So, the stage is being set for when America will finally be ready for "a new way". I only hope that the Systems Thinking community (and its cousins - by virtue of the Performance Model of The UN Global Compact - in the corporate social responsibility community) manage to get organized well enough to offer themselves as the "new way" when the time comes. Because if they don't then some "other new way" will take its place. (Yes, I'm talking about, Sarah Palin. I know she sees this crisis coming. But she has a very different take on what the response to the crisis should be. After all, she's an "end of days" person.)

But there's another hurdle that Systems Thinking will have to overcome. And that is that - at its very core - it is a discipline that involves thinking differently. As the name suggests, it involves thinking in systems... frequently and continuously... which is not how many of us have been taught to think."

Read the rest of this obituary here.

Monkeys with Typewriters:

2009-10-02T16:33:00.004+01:00

Monkeys with Typewriters: Myths and realities of social media at work

is the title and (working)sub-title of a new Triarchy Press book by Jemima Gibbons, to be published on December 1st 2009.

It has been and continues to be a great learning experience to edit the book and discuss its themes and content with Jemima. Our business has plenty to learn from her keen observations and those of the 50+ thought leaders in the social media arena who were interviewed by Jemima in the course of writing the book.

Jemima has been blogging around the themes of the book for a long time now. You can read many of her interviews by following the category links off her latest announcement on her blog.

There will be a launch event at Cass Business School on December 9th 2009, watch this space for futher details.

John Seddon and the Red Tories

2009-09-26T16:46:00.002+01:00

If you'd asked me thirty years ago, at the time of the accession of Mrs Thatcher, whether I would ever be interested under any circumstances in goings on at the Tory Party Conference...

But this year John Seddon will be talking about "Real reform in public services" and I'm delighted that people are listening.

In fact, more and more people seem to be listening. In Friday's Independent, Andreas Whittam Smith wrote at length about the scourge of the 'factory' call centre. He quotes John - 'one of the most acute observers of what is involved' - on scripts, procedures, targets, standards, inspection and compliance: the whole razzmatazz of public service ineptitude. Excellent article if you haven't seen it.

And, if you were listening to Analysis on Radio 4, you'll have heard Michael Blastland interviewing a familiar voice on the role of targets in the NHS. A balanced programme with trenchant contributions from Professor Seddon. Have a listen.

Tory Conference Corner
John Seddon's Systems Thinking in the Public Sector
Andreas Whittam Smith in The Independent
Radio Four's Analysis programme

Business Innovation Audit Widget

2009-09-25T12:03:00.000+01:00

Strategic Marketing Plan Audit Widget

2009-09-25T11:02:00.001+01:00

The Customer Satisfaction Audit Widget

2009-09-25T10:58:00.000+01:00

The Organisation Shadow-Side Widget

2009-09-25T10:55:00.002+01:00

Managing the shadow-side at work

2009-09-25T10:33:00.003+01:00

Whatever we call it, we all know organisations have a shadow-side. It includes informal or unacknowledged systems, structures, relationships and ways of getting things done.

For example:

office politics, rivalries, grudges and resentments that can go unspoken but influence what happens in the organisation every day

informal networks of opinion formers and ‘strong characters’ – managers ‘in the know’ use these networks rather than official channels to get things done or communicate a message quickly

the favours people do to get promotion, be liked, win approval, become indispensable, discredit others…

things that managers and staff will or will not take on trust

ways of getting new ideas and schemes approved

more or less honest ways that are found to meet performance measures, targets and deadlines, achieve bonuses and avoid penalties

Seen like this, you may find you’ve worked in organisations where the shadow- side was more important than the formal/official side. But two things are certain:

good managers and leaders know how to make use of the shadow-side

plenty of organisations have been brought to their knees because the shadow-side got out of control

Which is why senior managers in any organisation need to ensure the shadow-side is understood and acknowledged and need to find out where it is causing delays and problems, undermining the business strategy or even threatening the future of the organisation.

The Organisation Shadow-Side Audit lets you do exactly that. It’s a ready-to-run, self-assessment audit that will work in any organisation. Published by Cambridge Strategy (a Triarchy Press imprint) it includes 9 detailed questionnaires (you can score your answers to each question), an introduction to the subject and to each of the 9 themes, and improvement guidelines for any areas where the questionnaires suggest that there is a problem.

A small group of 3-4 people can run the audit right away, without consultancy support or any special training. The results are seen by you only.

The Audit is a 130-page document (including the 9 questionnaires) and you can buy the e-Audit (for just £20) or order the print version (which includes a copy of the e-Audit) for £90. The e-Audit is designed to be read on your computer (you don't need a Kindle or other e-book reader) and you can search, bookmark and add notes to your e-Audit, just like any other document.

To read about the audit in detail and order your (printed or e-) copy click here or use the extraordinary widget:

Social software at work

2009-09-14T16:33:00.004+01:00

I loved this blog from Suw Charman-Anderson. It puts "my" "failures" at proselytising and building blogs and workspaces at Triarchy (and with other social groups) into perspective. No need to give up if things don't work out as expected. We do however value staff time very highly, so there is a real cost of failure. I intend our latest social space project to succeed! And another of her blogs gives some useful hints on how to make that more likely.

What is this latest project? We are planning the build of a new website to make it easier to add content (in the form of articles, editorials, blogs, products) to our website as well as to streamline our online sales business. Our plan is to use open source "content management system" Drupal with an open source ecommerce module (probably Ubercart), and doing this means we get social spaces by default.

I'm thinking about all this in the wake of a very interesting meeting with Jemima Gibbons at the Candid Cafe in Islington. Jemima is writing a book to be published by Triarchy Press which I have the privilege of editing and which will come out this November (2009). Click through Jemima's blog for a preview of what she's writing.

Open educational conspiracies at the IFF

2009-09-01T13:20:00.007+01:00

Graham Leicester of the International Futures Forum (IFF) has been blogging about his involvement in an open conspiracy to transform education. His thoughts also appeared in an article in the Scotsman on August 31st. He is putting out a call for pragmatic visionaries to join the debate and the action, at first in Scotland where the conditions are ripening for a significant change of direction in educational policy and practice. He proposes

... a twin track strategy. At the level of practice provide the tools and frameworks to encourage thinking beyond the existing culture (our three horizons Kit for schools will be launched later this year); and at the policy level provide dedicated support for pragmatic visionaries, in the knowledge that some of what they get up to will be transgressive and different. They are planting the seeds of next practice.

and, as good as his word, IFF are providing practical support for people who are up for the challenge of educational innovation

... our own next step will be to provide a safe, supported, facilitated space for the pragmatic visionaries in Scotland to get together to support each other and to devise next practice - with our own headquarters at The Boathouse as its home.

I'm happy to be part of the conspiracy as one of the publishers of Transformative Innovation in Education and would like to invite anyone interested to join us. The booklet is concise and to the point and we've had several reports that it is a pleasure to read.

ITMA

2009-08-18T16:21:00.002+01:00

More on the John Seddon : Audit Commission debate.

(If you haven't been following, see the interim update here.)

Now it's got to the hallowed pages of The Torygraph where Philip Johnston is talking about this 'illuminating spat'.

Johnston ends his account of the debate like this:

"Many people in the public sector believe that John Seddon is right. Setting arbitrary targets and measuring against those does not help improve performance. In fact, it causes it to deteriorate. Millions of taxpayers are suffering as a result. We deserve better."
Indeed we do. But is anyone listening?

Well, do you know, I rather think they are starting to listen.

Remember John's book is here and it's a cracking good read (and how often can you say that about a book on systems thinking in the public sector?

John Seddon takes on the Audit Commission

2009-07-23T17:22:00.003+01:00

I wanted to call it Asterix and the Audit Commission. Not, you understand, because John Seddon is a short man, but because he has a wonderful habit of taking on venerable government institutions and suggesting that they be radically restructured or, sometimes, simply abolished.

This root and branch approach has won him an enthusiastic following amongst clients in the public and private sector but few friends in central government. To the point where alarmed ministers, having spoken to him, tend to try and forget that they have spoken to him. 'Surely he can't have meant that we should just abolish the entire systems of targets and performance measurement?'

Oh yes he did.

Anyway, John (who wrote Systems Thinking in the Public Sector, which essentially ridicules the way we run whole swathes of the public sector and which should be required reading for anyone involved in running anything) recently wrote an article for the Local Government Chronicle. It proposed abolishing the Audit Commission.

Foolishly, a nice man at the Audit Commission replied. He really shouldn't have. (As a proper journalist until recently, he should also have known better.) It stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest. If you haven't got time to read it all, here's the executive summary:

(As usual, click on the black and white rectangle to read the report full screen)

By the way, if you like all this, why not have a look at, and vote for, John's manifesto for public sector reform?

Guess what it's called?

Shut it down.

Nuff said.

Educational leadership faltering in Scotland?

2009-07-22T12:05:00.016+01:00

The story behind Triarchy Press' recent publication Transformative Innovation in Education has developed a new twist. The pamphlet describes how the Scottish Government's A Curriculum for Excellence (ACfE, five years old next November) stimulated a conversation at the heart of Scottish Education that goes well beyond conventional thinking on educational excellence, and thus beyond the confines of Scottish Education. The policy became seen as a blueprint for a transformation from a school system rooted in the Industrial Revolution of the early 20th century to one better adapted to a radically different 21st century. Using the three horizons framework, the pamphlet clarifies the challenges that all such third horizon innovations face from the first horizon of standards-based incremental reform, which sees it as its duty to bend all new initiatives to fit its current agenda. It was thus not just predictable but inevitable that the innovative impulse behind ACfE would hit resistance from the very institution that commissioned it it: the Scottish Government. This appears to have been happening, and people are beginning to take notice.

Times Educational Supplement Scotland editor Neil Munro wrote a provocative article last Friday which describes how Keir Bloomer, a principal architect of ACfE and a co-author of Transformative Innovation in Education, has taken up the challenge of reviving the original intentions of the ACfE. The situation is further clarified (especially for anyone unfamiliar with ACfE) in an editorial endorsing the view that the Government has lost the ACfE plot in failing to encourage front line teachers to take a sufficiently active role in ACfE. Predictably, the Scottish Government stoutly defends their approach to implementing ACfE, as Neil Munro also reports in his article.

It will be interesting to see how or whether these sharp differences in viewpoint translate to coherent action in the classrooms of Scotland. The story is a clear example of what happens when a first horizon institution is in charge of changes that belong to the third horizon: they will not take place without a struggle and they will not happen swiftly, if they take place at all.

There is lots more interesting writing on this topic to be found on the TES website such as an article on taking inspiration from the ACfE in the classroom. See Jaquetta's blog for a lively view of the story. The Scotsman and the Times Online have also covered it (though Keir Bloomer is somewhat misquoted by the Times). And our pamphlet gives a fuller explanation of how the three horizons framework and other conceptual tools can be applied to implementing transformational change in education, as the ACfE originally set out to do.

Complexity Thinking

2009-07-09T12:23:00.002+01:00

"Under the new A-level curriculum, it didn't matter how students got there, as long as they got the grade. So what if they couldn't express an opinion of their own, find a secondary source or write an essay without a plan provided by their teacher?... it comes as little surprise to me to learn that undergraduate students are ill-equipped for university, that they lack independent thinking and learning skills." Janet Murray, Guardian June 2009

Crumbs! What future for society one wonders? The habits of thought required for successful innovative intitiatives in a constantly changing environment needs to be encouraged from a young age - that means an education system that values 'thoughtfulness' (learning to be wise) rather than percentages (learning to be wily). Our recent book Adventures in Complexity brings this necessity to light ...

Meanwhile, we can take heart at the work of the International Futures Forum. Their recent pamphlet, Transformative Innovation in Education, offers real food for thought and an insight into the type of conversation and engagement that is needed if children are not to remain frustrated by the present 'dinosaur' type of education.

I'm sure its the policy wonks' machinery that inhibits their ability to make changes and that there is a sound-delay inbuilt into their listening capacity. But society has been trying to tell them, for a long time now, that there is something wrong. There seems to be a faint whisper of change ... still lightyears behind present thinking ...

Imogen Fallows Profile

2009-07-02T11:13:00.009+01:00

Name:
Imogen Fallows

Description/identifier:
A publisher in the field of organisational learning

Contact details:
triarchypress.com
Twitter

Organisation:
Triarchy Press

Brief description of organisation:
Triarchy Press is an independent, author-friendly publishing house that specialises in publications about organisations, the way people work together and how to make things work better.

What first made you interested in learning about organisations?
Through reading Triarchy's publications and proposals I quickly realised that books about businesses and organisations are actually books about people - so they are relevant to everyone's daily life. Learning about how to structure an organisation so that it gets the best out of its staff, products and services requires a deep understanding of how and why people and systems function - and that has benefits in every sphere, whether personal or professional.

Do you have a particular interest within organisational learning? If so, what is it?
At the moment I'm interested in leadership. It's a broad area, but many of the books we publish at Triarchy ask and give answers to questions about how organisations should be led - whether that means making organisations fit for future challenges or looking at the leadership gaps within existing organisational structures.

Which Triarchy publications have you read?...
Almost all of them

...Of these, which would you recommend to a friend, colleague or other organisation?
In particular (and depending on the recipient), The Three Ways of Getting Things Done, Erasing Excellence, Systems Thinking in the Public Sector, Inside Project Red Stripe, Organising and Disorganising, The Search for Leadership and Adventures in Complexity.

Have you made any changes to your working practices as a result of reading a Triarchy publication? (If you wish, please include descriptions of the changes and their implications for your work.)
All of the above titles made me change the way I think about my working patterns in some way - For example, Three Ways introduced me to Triarchy theory and the observation that humans have become addicted to hierarchy as a way of organising despite their being alternative (and often more effective ways of getting things done), Systems Thinking in the Public Sector is an effective demonstration of why command and control thinking and target culture is flawed and Adventures in Complexity taught me to see the potential in uncertainty and to consider problems from a variety of perspectives.

What theme/s would you like to see us publish about in the future?
More about Systems Thinking, Complexity and leadership amid today's challenges - new ways of thinking about 21st century problems in an easily digestable form.

Any other comments about Triarchy Press and you?
How can Triarchy reach out to other people and businesses experiencing similar challenges and can we find ways to help each other?

The secret life of organisations

2009-06-30T10:45:00.002+01:00

A complexity approach removes simplistic hopes of an ordered and controllable existence where, if only we had the right ‘keys’ or ‘tools’, we would be able to fashion a successful organisation. Instead, it offers a way to identify underlying patterns of order and indicators for influencing future sustainable practice; it shows how simple recurrent rules result in complex behaviour and that ‘influential interventions’ do not take a neat cause-and-effect path but may generate unexpected outcomes.

The focus of Adventures in Complexity is not so much organisations as the ‘life of organisations’. Author Lesley Kuhn sees organisations as ‘collectives of human activity’ and here describes how complexity theory can be applied in and to organisations.

Complexity theory acknowledges that people are self-organising, dynamic and emergent beings who are capable of discerning thoughtfulness and innovative responses to change both within and between organisations. It argues that sustainability is best served by tapping into this entire pool of potential.

It embraces uncertainty and change. It uses terms like non-equilibrium and turbulence to show that, when systems reach ‘the edge of chaos’, they are most likely to exhibit creative, innovative responses and new patterns and structures are most likely to emerge. In the current unpredictable climate many organisations may consider themselves 'near the edge of chaos'. Yet most will not realise that this is where the greatest potential for success lies.

Lesley Kuhn here introduces the principles of complexity theory in a clear and accessible way through discussion of those concepts and metaphors that are most useful in understanding organisational life. This provides a foundation from which to apply these principles to organisations and much of the book is dedicated to complexity in practice.

Seven case studies, from a not-for-profit to a large pharmaceutical company, examine this sophisticated way of thinking and the application of key complexity metaphors.

fitness landscape – the need for an organisation to act coherently within its wider environment
communicative connectedness – organisations can be seen as existing through conversations between all participants and the nature and quality of those interconnections is critical
sensitive dependence on initial conditions – often referred to as the butterfly effect – small differences to the initial conditions of an organisation can have dramatically disproportionate consequences to the sustainability of the organisation
edge of chaos-chaotic edge – edge of chaos thinking allows organisations to handle change effectively and develop new strategic directions as they flexibly encounter new situations and opportunities; chaotic edge thinking is where organisations perceive themselves to be under threat rather than full of potential, and retreat to rules-based behaviour
attractors – the energies that motivate us in our work; to be aware of and to understand these enables managers to constructively review work practices
fractality – thinking fractally means recognising that the global and the local are embedded in all levels of social practice.

The book has further guidance on how to use complexity – a list of the type of questions that are useful as a starting point for an inquiry, and an action list for managers or leaders who want to enhance organisational opportunities.

For leaders, managers, and everyone who works in or for an organisation, the book offers a straight-forward and immediately practical way of applying what may seem like a complicated theory.

For academics, researchers and students who may be theorising in a vacuum, the book shows how complexity theory can be translated into the workplace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lesley Kuhn is Senior Lecturer in the College of Business at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. For 14 years prior to this she worked at the Social Ecology Centre, an innovative post-graduate oriented transdisciplinary Centre that brought an integral perspective on the self, nature and society and has been active in bringing complexity habits of thought to philosophical and social inquiry and in developing complexity informed ethnographic research approaches.

She is author of more than 40 book chapters and published papers and has led more than 30 research projects as well as being the Guest Editor for special double issue of the prestigious Journal, World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, that was dedicated to showcasing the work of UWS academics in bringing complexity informed approaches to social inquiry.

She is a master of transdisciplinary thinking, with degrees in music, education and environmental science and a doctorate in philosophy. Her hopes are for a tolerant, democratic and egalitarian society where people are aware of how they are structured and categorised by social and cultural dictates, ideologies and the declarations of those who think they have a monopoly on what is right and should be known. She is passionate about protecting and promoting flexibility and freedom of mind and soul along with a capacity for trust, wonder and hope.

Innovation - the threefold path

2009-06-28T12:27:00.004+01:00

In publishing our recent books, articles and audits on innovation, we've researched the subject widely and compiled a huge list of resources. It seems a shame to keep them to ourselves, so we've collated the best of them (see below).

You'll find case studies, books, articles, blogs, websites, self-assessments, business school rankings and more - all on the subject of innovation and creativity.

If you know of others that you would recommend, please let us know (just post a comment).

To view full screen, click the black and white rectangle below and to the right:

Public Service innovation

2009-06-19T12:44:00.003+01:00

A clear and sensible piece by Irene Lucas, Chief Executive of South Tyneside Council, written for the Public Management and Policy Association and reproduced by PublicNet. Here's the precis:

Our Public Services are reluctant to innovate. They are risk averse. Fair enough. They get spanked by the Daily Mail and everyone else for wasting our money when they get it wrong. Trouble is, they're already getting it wrong and wasting money and are getting spanked by the likes of John Seddon. Instead, we must try and cultivate innovation in Public Services.

"I was delighted to participate in the production of NESTA’s recent publication Transformers: How Local Areas Innovate to Address Changing Social Needs. This work represents one expression of a sea-change in the public sector’s attitude to innovation. Central government now needs to catalyse that energy, and give it the space to flourish. John Seddon’s Systems Thinking in the Public Sector powerfully argues that inspection is ‘stifling innovation and improvement’, and instead of being measured on compliance, assessments should be on showing understanding and improving the work we do. Is it now time to say to our partners in the Audit Commission that we should be penalized for the opportunity cost of not innovating, instead of not complying?"

Of Meerkats and Men

2009-06-18T10:57:00.003+01:00

On the RSA blog recently, Matthew Taylor hoped that his readers would be "more responsive to [my post on an advertising campaign using] meerkats than they have recently been to my fascinating posts on public service reform".

Sure enough, the wave of ensuing comments referenced Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Dawkins and memes, affordances, epidemics, Seth Godin and much more. Matthew's response:

So, do I laugh at the brilliant comments already up on this post or cry at how much easier it is to get comments on jokes and adverts than public services and the future of democratic socialism?

I laugh.

And I pledge to write more posts about things that actually interest people rather than reheated versions of the commentariat blather you can read every day in your ‘viewspaper’.

It's the last paragraph that matters. There's no point banging on about dumbing down or bemoaning declining levels of engagement with nice but dull theory. That's just how it is.

So, in the same vein, I know that almost all of you really despise the soundbite and would infinitely prefer to read a 324 page monograph on Systems Thinking and Leadership. But, just in case anyone is feeling frivolous, here's author Bill Tate's take on what's wrong with polishing fish (an analogy for leader development programmes) in a recent audio interview he did for Management-Issues.com.

Audio interview ~ Sample chapter ~ Buy the book

You can also read a sample chapter of Bill's book (it's called The Search for Leadership) here.

Finally, if you insist, you can buy the hardback, the paperback of the e-book here.

[The interview has a nice reference to Simon Caulkin's systems-based argument that looking to individuals to cure systemic problems is a doomed exercise because we live in an organisational economy not an individual economy. Note to The Observer: Axing Simon Caulkin was a bad decision. You'll lose more readers and money than you save.]

Authors of standing

2009-06-15T10:46:00.003+01:00

Congratulations to Buzz Wilms, whose Liberating the Schoolhouse (published by Triarchy under that title for US readers and as Erasing Excellence for the rest of the world) won second place in the Los Angeles Press Club awards last night (June 14th).

The book tells the story of what happened to a failing California High School when staff were given the freedom to take their own decisions, set agendas and act like autonomous adults - and what happened when the command and control regime removed those freedoms.

It's a modern-day morality tale for anyone interested in the distribution of power in organisations.

Congratulations also to John Seddon, nominated to be the UK's Public Services Tzar on the No. 10 Petitions website.

John's Systems Thinking in the Public Sector - welcomed by Simon Caulkin in The Observer and Philip Johnstone in the Daily Telegraph (and they're not the most natural bedfellows) continues to unsettle the UK government and the Audit Commission. It also continues to delight a growing number of public sector leaders who know from experience that targets, standards, 'deliverology', centralisation and back-office warehouses JUST MAKE THINGS WORSE.

Finally, Good luck to Jemima Gibbons (author of a forthcoming Triarchy book on Leadership 2.0) who is standing for election to the RSA Fellowship Council.

Chemical Caterpillars

2009-06-03T22:22:00.003+01:00

Look, I read today - courtesy of LinkedIn - that they've developed a chemical 'caterpillar' that offers a path to electronics-free robots. That's more important than landing on the moon isn't it? Electronics-free robots.

A chemical gel that can walk like an inchworm has been demonstrated in a Japanese robotics lab.

Scientists have made a colour-changing, motile gel by combining polymers that change in size depending on their chemical environment. This is based on an oscillating chemical reaction called the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction. The result is an autonomous material that moves without electronic stimulation.

In case you're wondering, an inchworm is the caterpillar of the geometer moth. It lacks the prolegs of other Lepidopteran caterpillars in the middle portion of the body, with only two or three pairs an the end. Equipped with appendages at both ends of the body, a caterpillar will clasp with its front legs and draw up the hind end, then clasp with the hind end (prolegs) and reach out for a new front attachment - creating the impression that it is measuring its journey.

Oh, and here's an image of spiral waves in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.

Auditing your business innovation processes

2009-05-27T11:12:00.002+01:00

Here's a shameless plug for our business innovation audit, using the magic of an iPublish widget. It could be the first of many, many such widgets...

Systems Thinking and Organisational Leadership

2009-05-19T20:24:00.003+01:00

From Systemic Failure to Systemic Leadership

Although there’s been a long-running debate about whether leadership can be taught, most people would say we know good leadership when we see it. Well, it turns out we were wrong.

In what is destined to become the new leadership ‘bible’, leadership guru Bill Tate takes us back to basics to examine our assumptions about leadership and organisations. As elegantly as a fishmonger filleting a Dover sole, he uses Systems Thinking to expose a number of key misconceptions:

Separating leadership from leaders
Although it is now generally accepted that leadership is not tied to elites or authority, it is still often associated with a senior management position and hierarchical thinking.
Bill reminds us that most leaders spend only a little of their time leading and that leadership can be a vital aspect of people’s jobs anywhere in the organisation.

Separating leadership from people
Even spreading the job of leadership around more widely, still leaves the focus of leadership on individuals.
Bill asks us to put that deeply ingrained approach to one side, and think in a radically different way. He sees leadership activity as grounded not in the individual but in the organisation. Drawing on Systems Thinking, he calls this approach systemic leadership and defines it as follows:

“Improving the way an organisation is led, based on understanding the organisation as a system, focused on the interdependency between leadership and the organisation, concerning how leadership is applied, managed and developed.”

Separating leadership from development
When an organisation identifies a need for ‘stronger leadership’, the first thing to emerge is always an agenda for developing people.
Drawing on his long experience, first as head of HR Strategy at British Airways and then as a consultant, Bill shows how the usual defective thinking about leadership and people has infected the way organisations think about improving leadership. The discussion, he says, typically starts with ‘Let’s have a leadership development programme’, rather than starting with a questioning process that begins with the organisation’s needs and goals.

Separating development from improvement
Conventional thinking means that leadership can safely be left for individual managers to sort out and for HR to develop. Collapsing the leadership agenda into personal development is where the quest for improved leadership in organisations starts to go wrong.
Bill invites us to shift from a ‘development’ to an ‘improvement’ perspective. Asking the question ‘How can we improve leadership in this organisation?’ opens the door to a wider variety of interventions and a wider range of targets for improvement action.

Separating the organisation from the business
The word ‘organisation’ glosses over an important distinction between the business and the organisation. The business is essentially outwardly focused and profit driven. A company’s business model answers the question ‘How will this company make money out of what it is doing?’. By contrast, the organisation is the set of internal arrangements at the service of the business.
Bill insists that a clear distinction must be made between the two before leadership can be properly considered.

Separating the organisation from its people
If the business is to receive the leadership it needs, the organisation has to provide more than a context.
Bill asks us to see the organisation not as a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it but as an active player that has to contribute to leadership if it is to receive its due from managers. The connection between leadership and its host is symbiotic, with the organisation proving a vital partner both to leadership and improvement, and to making use of leadership action delivered by managers.

In an article written to coincide with the book's publication this week, Bill Tate examines our reactions to the systemic failings witnessed in a number of recent and current UK news stories:

* MPs' expenses
* the killing of Baby Peter
* the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by the Metropolitan Police.

They provide a timely backdrop to his incisive analysis of the problems that underpin our current approach to leadership in organisations.

And they highlight the need for a new approach, which he explains lucidly in his new book.

To see the document full screen, click on the rectangle icon which is top right in the box below. Click the X as usual to revert to normal viewing.

For details of Bill's new book The Search for Leadership, visit TheSearchforLeadership.com

Mythogeography

2009-05-15T16:49:00.005+01:00

Early pages of the widely-anticipated new Phil Smith mapuscript.

To view it full screen, click on the black and white rectangle below (it looks like this..........

More on heterarchy

2009-05-14T10:26:00.004+01:00

I came across Ross Dawson talking about heterarchy here. It's a good piece and reminds us that Voltaire had it a while ago with 'If you wish to converse with me, define your terms'. Here's an extract:

The definition for heterarchy offered by Stephenson in her footnotes is “an organizational form somewhere between hierarchy and network that provides horizontal links that permit different elements of an organization to cooperate whilst individually optimizing different success criteria.” While this is a useful definition, this needs to be understood and accepted by others before the argument for heterarchy can proceed to action. A more commonly used definition is that used by Carole Crumley, who suggests that heterarchy is “the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different ways.”[1] This evokes both the reality of multiple levels, and the communication between levels that is critical in transcending the dysfunctions of pure hierarchies.

It is valuable to remember that organizations are intrinsically systemic. Systems theory and its progeny have helped us to understand how some characteristics of systems and organizations can be self-sustaining. As such, shifting from hierarchies to heterarchies can only be done effectively by viewing the interrelated entities as elements in a system, which very likely will incorporate mechanisms that make structural change difficult.

The talk of heterarchy is taking me back to Gerard Fairtlough's book on The Three Ways of Getting Things Done (hierarchy, heterarchy and responsible autonomy) - but this mention of systemic organisations leads neatly to Bill Tate's new book on systemic leadership in the systemic organisation.

Anyway, Jon Husband at Wirearchy quotes Ross Dawson (above) and goes on to talk about the problems/opportunities posed by large organisations in a networked world:

Anarchy, it seems, is less attractive than rigid hierarchy - and heterarchy requires constant tinkering and fussing via negative feedback loops. We have had experience in addressing these issues before, but not in ongoing, always-on real time everywhere. To where will it all lead we don’t know - but there’s a good chance that this time it will be substantively different. Homo Collegiens is a new term that I have come across recently … hmmm.

What continues to fascinate me is whether, how and when the critical mass of larger organizations that our modern society knows so well will begin to address honestly the clear evidence that a fundamentally new set of conditions - interconnected smart people and increasingly smart software - demands fundamentally different responses to their environment of interconnected customers and employees.

Oh, the signs have been around for a long time - QWL initiatives in the 70’s and 80’s, learning organization theory and practice in the 90’s, coaching, flattening organizations, turning the org chart upside-down, Emotional Intelligence, self-directed work teams, pushing accountability down the organizational chain of command, boundaryless organizations, and on and on, and on …

And yet … for each of these initiatives, there has been an equal and opposite reaction towards … more control, increased hierarchy, a growing divide between winners and losers. It’s as if we collectively don’t know how or can’t trust ourselves to operate in self-organizing, self-regulating, wise networks that will do what need to get done.

And this, I think, is the deeper message I am taking from Steven Johnson’s book - that the self-organization, the changes to the meta-rules of how humans work together in purposeful action and systems, will happen despite the best efforts of the commanders to effect their will.

It all depends on where you look at it from - 10 feet up, 10,000 feet up, 100,000 feet up or a million feet up. If we continue to remember the profound impacts of an order-of-magnitude change to societies around the world due to a profound shift in the means of distributing information and knowledge made available by the printing press … then the emerging changes to us and our social systems due to the gobal wired interconnectedness will, I think, inevitably lead to an age of wirearchy - a dynamic n-way flow of power and authority based on knowledge, credibility, trust and focus on results enabled by interconnected people and technology.

This will be the first age where we are truly, at the meta level, governed by the feedback loops that we create, both consciously and unconsciously. We will be organized for, and governed by, the dynamics of championing-and-channeling rather than commanding-and-controlling.

I believe we are seeing this unfold in front of us, daily. Generally, the people at the top don’t like it one bit.

As Fairtlough rightly says, the hegemony of hierarchy is harder to shake than one might expect and as Alain de Vulpian, social anthropologist and commentator observes, the tendency towards flatter, fairer self-organisation is always matched by an equal 'tropism' towards more hierarchy and control. I'm not so sure as Jon that the goodies will win.