In the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocity, once it became clear that the perpetrators were using hijacked aeroplanes to attack buildings, it became a matter of national security to have every plane in US airspace land at the nearest airport. However, no procedure or...
It is hardly a secret that effective relationships are any business's greatest asset. Few would dispute this proposition, yet just as few act upon it. In too many cases, the business environment either fails to encourage the relationships that will help the company...
Human teams are enigmatic entities: they collaborate on shared aims and goals at one level, and randomly reshape or reform those very aims and goals at another. Welcome to complexity theory. For managers, this can be something of a headache. Getting a project wrapped...
In the past, some command-and-control managers viewed human organisations as machines. Those ‘machines’ would function with predictable outcomes when operated correctly. Nowadays, managers that embrace complexity theory adopt a radically different model: human...
In the 1990s, when academics and business leaders first began discussing the idea of applying complexity science to organisations and businesses, their enthusiasm failed to be picked up by the majority of managers. Managers were resistant to seeing the world as it...
Organisational Development (OD) aims at healthy organisational change through harnessing a common value base and collaborative inquiry. In reality, however, organisational life, and change, turns out to be a lot messier and a lot more unpredictable. A traditional...
