Tag: Managing Complexity

Punching Above Your Weight
by Liisa Välikangas

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Look for the outliers, companies that are so different as to be puzzling. What makes some outliers powerful, and noteworthy to strategic thinkers, is their ability to “punch above their weight”. In other words, these easily dismissed outliers amplify the effects they have across various industries and generate potent, transformative change. Innovative new methods that outliers are currently using for such strategic impact include:   1) Contributor architectures that facilitate unlikely encounters. Startup Nectar incubates new “bio-mimicry” businesses, a field where experts in life sciences like biology together with engineers, architects, computer scientists and corporate managers come together to fit the designs and processes of the natural world into new buildings, products, and services. Recent […]

Best Fitted to Cope with Complexity
by Dagmar Woyde-Koehler

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“What we need today are not tunnel vision thinkers but inquiring free-ranging minds because such minds are best fitted to cope with complexity”. This was one of the key points made by Prof. Peter Kruse in his address at the opening of the Berlin exhibition of the OUBEY Global Encounter Tour in March 2013.   Peter Kruse is well known in Germany for his research into how self-organizing systems and intelligent networks perform and function, and for his perceptive cultural analysis – as well as for his at times provoking and highly controversial ideas. From his own fresh and unfamiliar vantage point, he cast new light on OUBEY and the idiosyncratic maturation process that gave […]

Leading in Complex Times
by Lynda Gratton

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If you’re a business leader today you are working to understand and balance the perspectives of an unprecedented variety of stakeholders – from NGOs becoming more voracious in their demands to workers who are increasingly hard to engage – and doing so in a world that is more transparent and connected than ever before. It’s a tough challenge.   I found myself reflecting on this the other night as I sat down with two very smart people for one of those marvelous European dinners. Both are business leaders in one of the world’s great pharmaceutical companies. The conversation turned to the growing complexity of the business environment, and the question was inevitably posed: What had […]

Peter F. Drucker – Management Needs Values
by Manfred J. Hoefle

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Much has been said and written of Peter Drucker, and yet there still remains a little known aspect to his life. Drucker hardly mentioned his own personal philosophy1 and only later, after his death, was greater consideration given to his innermost convictions and motives.   Christian thinking as a foundation for management theory The Christian aspect to Drucker’s thinking is shown by these quotations from his works. (The summaries that follow may encourage you to read Drucker while considering this aspect.)   1. The nature of humanity   “The only basis of freedom is the Christian concept of man’s nature: imperfect, weak, a sinner, … yet made in God’s image and responsible for his actions.” […]

How Drucker Thought About Complexity
by John Hagel III

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This is a cross-post from the HBR Complexity Serieswritten by John Hagel, and is one of the perspectives relating to the 2013 Drucker Forum Theme (“Managing Complexity”).   Throughout his life, Peter Drucker strived to understand the increasing complexity of business and society and, most importantly, the implications for how we can continue to create and deliver value in the face of complexity. I have long been influenced by Drucker’s work. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was already anticipating some of the implications of the Big Shift just beginning to emerge: the transition to an information economy, the centrality of knowledge work, and the transformative impact of digital technology on all types of work.   […]

Making Management as Simple as Frisbee
by Steve Denning

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This is a cross-post from the HBR Complexity Serieswritten by Steve Denning, and is one of the perspectives relating to the 2013 Drucker Forum Theme (“Managing Complexity”).   Complexity is not a new condition. While it’s true that many aspects of life have become more densely connected and unpredictable, the fact is that our world is inherently complex. Most of the environments we move in and tasks we perform require us to deal with interdependent and dynamic phenomena.   Consider (as economists Andrew Haldane and Vasileios Madouros recently did) the seemingly simple task of catching a Frisbee. It requires the resolution in real-time of two infinitely variable factors: the Frisbee’s trajectory and the catcher’s own […]

The Mongrel Discipline of Management
by David Hurst

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This is a cross-post from the HBR Complexity Serieswritten by David K. Hurst, and is one of the perspectives relating to the 2013 Drucker Forum Theme (“Managing Complexity”).   Humans engage with their world in two reciprocal ways: firstly as passionate participants and secondly as detached observers. As managers we cycle between these modes constantly. It’s the mark of a great manager to be able to judge, in a complex situation, when and how to use each of them.   Detached observation requires a certain maturity. Consider that we are born into the world immersed in context. We are embodied organisms, fine-tuned by evolution to garner cues to action from our surroundings. We pay attention when […]

Why higher education requires a new underlying philosophy
Liviu Nedelescu

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Futurists, professors and entrepreneurs seem to agree: the higher education establishment will be disrupted in the near future. Thomas Frey foretells the collapse of over 50% of colleges by 2030 while Clay Christensen proposes higher education to be just on the edge of the crevasse. The culprit responsible for the disruption in their view? Technology, or more precisely the increasing availability of online learning to which Michael Saylor would add the proliferation of mobile devices.   My view? There is more to the story than technological disruption. To understand such subtleties, one has to look at the underlying philosophy of education.   As knowledge is fast becoming a commodity, the very business model of traditional […]