Articles

Where have all the heroes gone?

You’re back in the boardroom again with your fellow senior executives. The CEO has asked each of you for a number—the EBIT uplift from those cost savings you’ve all been charged with finding. He’s going around the table. Fine—you’ve still time to flip through the report your EA printed out. You open your leather folder and quietly sift through the papers. It’s not there. You reach down into your bag, but your hand feels only the solid plastic triangle of your lunch. You peer down. No report. Shit.

You need those big numbers, the ones that will impress. You can’t believe you can’t bring them to mind–you used to be so good at that. You’d planned to refresh your memory by reading at least the executive summary during the early part of today’s agenda. Now, head cocked in feigned interest of the Chief Customer Officer’s plans, you surreptitiously reach for your phone. Your transformation director’s sitting just outside the boardroom waiting to catch you after this meeting. She’s hoping you’ll get her the green light today. You text: ‘Need EBIT figs from transformation’. As your colleague wraps up, you wait to see who the chairman will call on next. Thank goodness, it’s someone else.
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Springboard: One Mission

The latest in our series that uses the ‘book review’ format as a springboard into a wider conversation about the world of work—and how to do it better.

One Mission by Chris Fussell
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It’s become fashionable to rail against hierarchy and to assume that people, once energised by their mission, can organise themselves into structures which are flat—at least in intent. But as with the flat-earthers, facts get in the way. Not only do we each have different cognitive capacities, we have different modes of thinking about complexity and the time horizon we can comfortably operate at. The essential question is: How do you get the speed that comes from allowing autonomous action, but maintain coordination and control? (more…)

If TOC is so bloody great, why isn’t everyone doing it?

Have you heard about this amazing form of personal transport? In a city, it’s often faster than a car; in the country, it connects you to nature. It’s cheap, green and keeps you fit. The bicycle may not be the jetpack we hoped for as children, but it does all as advertised. So why aren’t we all on our bikes?

It’s a profound paradox that something as simple, powerful and unique as Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints can be so difficult to implement in an organisation. So what’s the constraint? The reasoning behind the theory is rock solid:

All systems have a constraint. If this were not the case,
the output would be infinite, or would collapse to zero.
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Springboard: Mindset

The latest in our series that uses the ‘book review’ format as a springboard into a wider conversation about the world of work—and how to do it better.

Mindset by Dr Carol S Dweck

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Which mindset do you have? Read each statement and decide if you mostly agree with it or disagree with it:

1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much
2. You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are
3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are

If you mostly agree with statements 1 and 2, you may have a ‘fixed mindset’. If you agreed with statements 3 and 4, you likely have a ‘growth mindset’. So what’s the difference? And why does it matter?
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A hierarchy required by nature

When I was in Year 3, I won a book prize for topping my class. The book, called How Things Work, had pictures of steam engines, telephone exchanges and aeroplanes; motor cars, power stations and printing presses. It fired my imagination and curiosity for how things work, which has never diminished.

Technical systems, like the ones described above, can be understood through the laws of physics and the axioms of mathematics. Social systems are another matter. Each of us is far more complex individually than any machine, and when you put us together in an organisation to accomplish a common goal, that complexity increases exponentially.(more…)

Springboard: Principles

The latest in our series that uses the ‘book review’ format as a springboard into a wider conversation about the world of work—and how to do it better.

Principles: Life & Work by Ray Dalio
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‘Principles,’ says Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s most successful hedge fund, ‘are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.’ His stated personal goal of ‘meaningful work and meaningful relationships’ is one most of us could subscribe to, and his fundamental question is: ‘Are you willing to fight to find out what’s true?’ By the end of his book, you may wonder if you’ve been fighting hard enough.
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