Managing Complex Systems

All is vanity, nothing is fair

By Dave Snowden  ·  December 10, 2012  ·  Managing Complex Systems, Polemic

Isn't it nice to be nice?  To talk only about how things would be so nice.  To posit a future where leaders and managers are nice people who believe in nice things and have nice values and beliefs.  Its so safe to be nice because no one can really disagree with you.  Changing anything in the world is then about making everyone nice, once that is achieved niceness will abound.  In the near term if someone isn't nice, well then just stop listening to them, pretend they don't exist, hang out with the nice people.

OK I'm being...

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Change Management or Change Leadership?

By Gary Wong  ·  September 30, 2011  ·  Managing Complex Systems

Yesterday I shared some of my experiences implementing enterprise-wide software solutions. I was quite involved with the People aspects, in particular, dealing with change. My first formal exposure in change methodologies occurred when I was trained by ODR. Founded by Darryl Conner in 1974, ODR held licenses with the major consulting firms from the mid-80s to late 90s. His book Managing at the Speed of Change became a must read for ERP clients.

So that we have a common understanding, let's use Wikipedia's definition:
"Change...

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Jumping the S-curve

By Gary Wong  ·  September 29, 2011  ·  Managing Complex Systems

One of the CE graphics that produced an "Ah-hah!" moment for me was Dave's S-curve diagram. It wasn't the first time that I had seen S-curves. At the global consulting firm where I worked, there were plenty of S-curve charts showing industries and firms going through life cycles. My "Ah-hah!" occurred discussing the bubble formed where the declining curve intersects the emerging curve of the new paradigm. This is where it hit me - if we pay attention to the weak signals and probe the outliers, we can help clients jump onto the next...

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Tracking flow in storytelling

By Marc Maxson  ·  July 25, 2011  ·  Managing Complex Systems

I'm pleased to be invited as a guest blogger! I actually don't know many of the other insightful bloggers here, which is a shame since there are so many interesting ideas. I stay holed up in East Africa running the GlobalGiving Storytelling Project and doing whatever it takes to turn >13,000 stories into meaningful community information for the hundreds of local NGOs we serve. Being in the communities (but not involved in story collection) allows me to see whether the process is going awry.

The most valuable piece of information for...

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Intersubjective Collective Intelligence Systems for Crisis Management & Response

By Noah Raford  ·  July 24, 2011  ·  Managing Complex Systems

A terrible tragedy happened this week in Oslo. A single Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik, possibly acting alone, took the lives of almost 100 people in a singular act of violence. This was the worst act of non-wartime violence in Norway’s history, producing twice the fatalities per capita than September 11th. Our heart goes out to the entire community of victims in and around Oslo, who will no doubt be suffering from this for years to come.

While the news was still unfolding, the social media sphere was abuzz with...

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