Systems

The Narrative Lab (@WContinuity) on The Pain of Knowledge Transfer (#WisCont)

Who? This is a call to all leaders, employees and practitioners to engage and collaborate with us on the following subject: How do you facilitate knowledge transfer between older experienced employees who are about to retire and younger inexperienced employees in an organisation? Why? Organisations are facing the pain of losing their experts to retirement, in some cases without having sufficiently given these experts the mechanism to share their knowledge, expertise and wisdom. Discussion points include: What impact have you [...]

By Aiden Choles|May 13th, 2010|Categories: Retiring experts, Systems|Tags: Knowledge transfer, Retiring experts|0 Comments

The systems approach to a children’s party

The guys at Cognitive Edge seem to be on a roll with all the video's they're creating! The latest one to be released is of Dave Snowden retelling one of the very first (and best) analogies I heard him use to explain the difference between ordered and unordered approaches. Enjoy!

By Aiden Choles|October 28th, 2009|Categories: Systems|Tags: Dave Snowden, Systems|0 Comments

Great research quote

In Gerald Zaltman's new book,Marketing Metaphoria he writes: "There are no easy solutions, just prescriptions for failure: When an answer immediately emerges from the data, the researchers probably rigged it into the study. That is, their confirmatory research mind-set unwittingly designed the study to arrive at the apparent solution. Beware of obvious conclusions." This is why we are such strong proponents of pre-hypothesis research.

By Aiden Choles|May 8th, 2009|Categories: Systems|Tags: bias, pre-hypothesis, research|0 Comments

Accountability struggles

During a really interesting meeting this morning, it was said: You never hear about "accountability struggles". Power is highly desired, accountability not so. This line articulated a pattern we see often in culture audits. Manager's hesitance to accept responsibility and accountability for decisions often lead to inertia and a "pass the buck" mentality that is detrimental to the productivity and morale of employees. I wonder how much of this is caused by a general intolerance to failure in an organisation. [...]

By Aiden Choles|March 25th, 2009|Categories: Business, Systems, the narrativelab|Tags: Complexity, leadership|0 Comments

How to fire a president with very little response

When a mechanic walks up to an aircraft with a toolbox, nothing on the aircraft changes. However, when there's an announcement of impending retrenchments, everything changes in the organisation. This is an example of the nature of complex adaptive systems thatDave will often quote when speaking of complexity. I've been struck over the last 60 hours since the ANC decided to recall President Thabo Mbeki, how a mechanic has walked up to the airplane known as South Africa, and very little has changed. I would have anticipated [...]

By Aiden Choles|September 28th, 2008|Categories: Systems|Tags: adaptive systems, ANC, complex, Complexity, thabo mbeki|0 Comments

With foresight, who needs hindsight?

I came across a billboard with this statement last week. It's part of a marketing campaign for one of the short term insurers. When I read it, my first thought was that this is probably one of the silliest statements I've seen in a while, but after thinking about it, I realised that someone who doesn't look at life through a complexity lense may think that it's rather clever. So why do I have a problem with it? Well, first [...]

By Aiden Choles|July 14th, 2008|Categories: Systems|Tags: Complexity, strategy, Systems|0 Comments

The Narrative Lab (@WContinuity) on The Pain of Knowledge Transfer (#WisCont)

The systems approach to a children’s party

Great research quote

Accountability struggles

How to fire a president with very little response

With foresight, who needs hindsight?

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