Stacey Agreement & Certainty Matrix
Metaphor
Wicked Questions
Generative Relationships
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When really innovative ideas are needed, when the future
is very uncertain, traditional approaches
to planning are of limited utility. An alternative approach involves the use of generative
relationships. In this approach new ideas and strategies emerge from such relationships inside and
outside the organization. The role of the leader is to foster generative relationships and learn from
the results, letting direction emerge instead of being "set" in advance by a central authority.
Minimum Specifications
Reflection
Life Cycle/ Ecocycle
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Growth doesn't always mean building. Frequently, destruction
is a necessary component in the life
cycle of a system - much like a forrest fire that provides rich nutrients to replenish the soil.
Drawing from a biological metaphor, this aide invites leaders to think about what they need to
deliberately destroy or stop doing to facilitate the renewal of their work in health care - and to
realize that a healthy organization has elements in all phases of the ecocylce simultaneously.
Board Evaluation & Appreciation
-
Does it feel like you are restricted in your use of a
complexity approach because of a Board that is
unconvinced, uninterested or stuck in a command and control mindset? You're not alone. But
rather than take a polarizing "me versus them approach, consider the leaders of the organization
through a complexity lens... and reflect on these tools for helping them assume the additional roles
of adapting and learning.
The Difference Matrix
-
The Difference Matrix is a frame that helps you think
about the emerging patterns of a group's
behavior and your behavior within the group. You can use it to plan an activity, observe an
interaction, or intervene to increase a group's capacity for adaptation. Use it to understand and
encourage emerging systemic change in organizations.
Our study of the science of complex adaptive systems
and our work with health care organizations in VHA
has led us to propose some principles of management that are consistent with an understanding of
organizations as CASs. In the spirit of the subject matter, there is nothing sacred or permanent about
this
list. However, these principles do begin to give us a new way of thinking about and approaching our
roles
as leaders in organizations.
We are not the first to propose such a list. Our intent
here is to capture practical principles that emerge from
the science of complexity in language that resonates with management issues. Furthermore, astute readers
will also observe that our list of principles, and CAS theory itself, has much in common with general
systems thinking, the learning organization, total quality, empowerment, gestalt theory, organizational
development and other approaches. It has much in common with these, but it is not any of these. CAS
theory clarifies and pulls together many aspects of good thinking from the past. An understanding of
CAS
is an understanding of how things work in the real world. That others in the past have also understood
these things and put them into various contextual frames should not be surprising. An understanding
of
CAS simply provides a broader, more fundamental, potentially unifying framework for these ideas.
1. Thoughts
