|
Key Point: Contrast
complexity oriented perspectives with traditional
management perspectives.
|
|
Traditional
|
Complexity
|
|
Following
Maps
|
Discovering route
and destination through
the journey
|
|
Decisions made
by logical,
analytical process
|
Decisions by exploratory,
experimental
process of intuition and reasoning by
analogy
|
|
Managers drive
and control
strategy
|
Managers create
favorable conditions for
complex learning
|
|
Building competitive
advantages
and intrapreneurship
|
Innovation and
accelerated organizational
learning
|
|
Stick to what you
know and
adapt to the environment
|
Creative interaction
with other actors in the
environment
|
|
Apply same general
prescriptions to many situations
|
New
mental model for each situation
|
|
Future
thinking
|
Thinking
in the here and now
|
|
Analysis
and quantification
|
Qualitative,
irregular patterns
|
|
Separate
parts
|
Whole
interconnected system
|
|
Outcomes
|
Learning
process and mental models
|
|
Minimize dysfunctional
group
dynamics
|
Effects of group
dynamics on thinking and
learning
|
|
Individual
expert or visionary
|
Personalities,
group dynamics, and learning
behaviors of managers
|
|
Stable, consensus
based on
"rational" reasoning
|
Creative instability
of contention and
dialogue. Consensus is periodic.
|
|
Condemnation of
messy real-life
decision making. Ignoring the
process
|
Examining, understanding,
and dealing with
organizational defense mechanisms and
game playing
|
|
Group learning
is a simple
process with outcomes
|
Continual questioning
of how people are
learning
|
|
Problem
solving
|
Opening up of contentious
and ambiguous
issues
|
|
Objectives
and visions
|
Developing agendas
of issues, challenges,
aspirations and intentions
|
|
Intention to secure
some fixed
thing
|
Intention to discover
what, why, and how
to achieve
|
|
Achieve
a particular future state
|
Be creative and
deal with what comes
|
|
Self
Managing Teams vs. Self Organization
|
|
Key Point: Team
concepts are inherently power tools of manipulation instead
of relying on the inner strength that comes from self organization.
|
|
Self
Organized Teams
|
Self
Organization
|
|
Permanent and formally
established parts of a reporting
structure
|
Fluid process with
informal, temporary,
spontaneous teams
|
|
Top management
can install
structure and control through
rules of team government
|
Managers can only
influence boundary
conditions around them
|
|
Managers decide
who
participates and what the
boundaries are
|
Participants decide
who takes part and
what the bounds of their activities are
|
|
Teams
replace the hierarchy
|
Self-organizing
networks are in conflict
with and are constrained by the hierarchy
|
|
Dispersed power
is supposed to
lead to consensus
|
Unequal power energizes
networks
through conflict, but also operates as a
constraint
|
|
Top management
empowers
people
|
People
empower themselves
|
|
Process is based
on strongly
shared culture
|
Process is provoked
and constrained by
cultural difference
|
|
Strategic
Thinking In A Dynamic Non-Linear Feedback Loop
|
|
Key Point: Strategic
thinking takes on a new form as you approach non-
linearity.
|
|
Linear
Thinking
|
Dynamic
Non-Linear Thinking
|
|
Same
general prescription
|
New
mental model for each new situation
|
|
Thinking
in the future
|
Thinking
anchored in the here and now
|
|
Analysis
and quantification
|
Reasoning by analogy
and intuition about
the qualitative, irregular patterns
|
|
Thinking
about separate parts
|
Thinking about
whole, interconnected
systems
|
|
Focusing
on outcomes
|
Focusing on the
learning process and on
the mental models that govern the process
|
|
Dysfunctional
group dynamics
|
Awareness of the
effects of group
dynamics on learning and thinking
|
|
Strategic
Vision In An Unpredictable World
|
|
Key Points - If
this future is unpredictable, then an organization wide "shared
vision" is impossible to formulate. Such an vision is an illusion or interpretation
made with hindsight.
|
- Vision and long term plans are fantasy
defenses against anxiety. Instead,
managers should focus on ever-changing agendas of strategic issues,
challenges and aspirations, unhitched to any limiting vision.
- Cohesive teams are needed for day-to-day
issues, but learning groups of
managers in spontaneous, self-organizing networks that have open,
public conflict and dialogue are vital to handling strategic issues. The self-
organizing political network of contacts undermines the
hierarchy/bureaucracy. In the absence of this tension and paradox there
can be no change.
- Normal management relies on logical analysis,
but extraordinary
management is exploratory, experimental and reasons by analogy.
- Benchmarking against milestones, and taking
corrective action means
rules, systems and rational argument. The control and development of an
open-ended, unknowable long term is a political process where
constraints are provided by the need to build support; it is self-policing.
- New strategic directions emerge from the
chaos of challenge and
contradiction. Top management does not drive the process, it creates
favorable conditions for complex learning and effective politics. They
create new models and maps by allowing people to learn.
Strength
grows from contact with the environment, not from existing strengths.
|
1. Thoughts
