Book Description

We live in times of unprecedented turbulence and uncertainty and we are losing faith in our ability to organise ourselves to deal with it. The traditional ‘top down’ functional hierarchy doesn’t feel like it works as well as it used to, and new generations of workers increasingly demand something a better organisational experience and career that their predecessors had to settled for. But when we look for an alternative, we are faced with a miasma of competing claims for different organising principles. Do we need to be purpose led or profit driven? Focussed or flexible? More centralised or decentralised? Hierarchical or networked? Agile, Lean or driven by scale? And should we all be aiming to become ‘teal’ organisations? This situation is confusing, and it is perilous. It is also unnatural - in a very fundamental sense - because it demonstrates that we have failed to learn nature’s tricks about how organisations can survive and thrive. In any kind of environment. No matter how turbulent and unpredictable. The remedy prescribed in this book is not a choice between ‘this’ or ‘that, it is about balance. Or more specifically maintaining a set of dynamic balances that continuously shift to tame the complexity faced, and created, by organisations. Balance begets calm and poise. Calm and poise beget clarity of thought, decisiveness and agility. This book paints a picture of what these balances are and how they work. It helps readers to describe and make sense of the mess and muddle of organisational life, to design healthy workplaces and to diagnose and cure diseased ones. It can do this because the book is not a manifesto of hope or wishful thinking. It brings together esoteric knowledge amassed over decades about how systems actually work (or don’t) in a form that is both accessible and practical. Amongst other things you will learn: · What creates organisational complexity and how to go about taming it · How to achieve economies of scale without incurring diseconomies of scale · How to promote freedom to act without sacrificing organisational order · About the universal law of organisation · About the five structure pillars and · The six balances essential for organisations to be viable · How to use describe, diagnose and treat organisational ills and design healthier ones · How to ‘bake in’ resilience · How to nurture and exploit the power of self organisation · How to be both stable and nimble, agile and lean and to exploit and explore To a curious reader this book is a key to a world of powerful but little understood ideas. For a management practitioner it provides a new perspective on familiar problems and a platform for action. And it helps a leader to grasp the essence of what is and reimagine what could be.