Money's no object The notion of a war for talent has been around for at least a quarter of a century. As business jargon goes it has stood the test of time. The militaristic language adds drama. Blood may be spilt. One imagines Google and Microsoft in a tug of war competition with the talented AI specialist performing the role of a low tensile rope. Scarcity fuelled the war for talent. There are not enough skilled management consultants, Java programmers or derivatives trader

Health warning In this article, I will be delving into what many might consider an indelicate matter. It is important to highlight from the outset that I am not a gastroenterologist. This article is metaphorical and does not represent in any way a medical breakthrough in respect of this debilitating condition. The Symptoms Telltale signs of organisational constipation, include: Loss of appetite   – Your leadership team seems to lack ambition. The organisation appears to be co

Check this out I’ve previously argued that organisations must behave more like living organisms if they are to thrive in an increasingly disruptive world. In this edition, I want to take that idea further and in a manner that can serve as a practical vitality checklist. Biologists, who know a thing or two about living systems, have a living systems checklist comprising eight characteristics. Let’s see how well organisations in general, ie those embracing industrial era princi

The typical employer-employee relationship is adversarial in nature. It rarely comes to blows. It sometimes comes to lawyers. It always involves a contract. Fair trade? Work in many cases, particularly where  Taylorism  has left its mark, is an inhumane activity that requires the worker to unnaturally contort themselves into an industrial process, which they then repeat ad infinitum. This might include quality control checks at a sex toy factory or staring into a spreadsheet

Goodbyes are hard There are three types of existential threats: Goodbye organisation Adios humanity Au revoir the planet. Few of us truly contemplate a universe in which Earth no longer exists. Some of us are acutely aware that humanity is playing with fire. Yet my sense is that many leaders are giving too little attention — not only to the fate of humanity, but even to the survival of their own organisations. Black swans flock To assess risk when we talk about threats, we us

Historians are underrated. Perhaps because history in school was often taught as a dry exercise in memorising dates and events. Yet without an understanding of history, we risk forgetting the hard-won lessons our forebears acquired at great cost. Citizens who have never experienced war, or its immediate consequences, are more likely to see it as a viable political instrument. Cycles Some historians look at the big picture. They have picked up on a repeating cycle of about eig

Firstly, this post is not a primer on how to build your own secret service (CIA, MI6, FSB etc), though there are parallels. Intelligent organisations, in my opinion, are very attuned to their environments and adapt homeostatically. Process-driven organisations regard their environment as a static backdrop,where disruptions, ie reality, are treated as exceptional, and thus inconvenient events.   In any case, cognition fuels intelligent organisations and it comes in two forms:

Doctor Holliday, I presume One would expect board level directors to recognise that the CEO can represent a single point of failure for the organisation. Think of the lone, bold gun slinger brought in to clean up the town. Great if she gets the job done, but disastrous if things go south at the OK Corral. But most CEOs operate within that liminal state that sits between the day of their appointment and being able to justify their remuneration package. But no problem. The appo

AiRMs race Here’s a quick acid-test to establish whether your AI investment to date is likely to yield value for your ecosystem: Do you have a Chief Information Officer in your leadership team? Does your CIO focus mainly on eliciting value from data or just on technology management? The answer to both needs to be ‘yes.’ Many organisations do not have a CIO in the top team, and even where they do, the CIO is often focused on tech matters. This is a problem. Firstly technology

Disruption revisited Disruption has always been part of organisational life. For quite some time it was something that companies (usually based in Silicon Valley) did to other companies. But today it also includes the wider macroenvironmental forces (both natural and manmade) bearing down on the organisation, as well as the internal disruption that these forces generate in respect of worker behaviour. Many of these forces are compounding, some exponentially. But they are also

Introduction This report captures some of the emerging trends that are largely driven by increasing disruption. These trends might well be indicative of a forthcoming reset in society. As you will read many of these trends are eroding the foundations upon which contemporary society rest. Individuals, organisations that acknowledge these trends and adapt accordingly will be at an advantage. It is particularly important that business, government and societal leaders acknowledge

AI and robots are not enough There is a growing school of thought that if you plaster enough AI across your business, it will henceforth be intelligent. And that is without any consideration of the data cesspit used to fuel the AI. Of course artificial is not the only form of intelligence business leaders have access to. However, Taylorism considers natural intelligence as problematic. Original thought would likely lead to process deviation and that can only result in ineffic

TechnoGov Over the years, we have seen various endeavours to integrate new technologies into both central and local government. Remember e-government and connected government? What with AI growing in both capability and accessibility, we are seeing an uptick in references to smart government. There are some references to artificially intelligent government, but fewer references to intelligent government. Generally these terms are referring to the use of technology in the publ

You have a lot going on You are complex. No doubt those behaviour-triggering hormones swilling about within us have a role to play. We have multiple moving parts (for example, we contain trillions of energy producing mitochondria), so it is fair to say we are complex systems. The organisations we work with / for are similarly so. As is the environment in which organisations operate. Complex systems have certain characteristics, including: Many interacting components Emergent

Cities were a natural consequence of the agricultural era. Living in larger groups enabled us to capitalise on food surpluses. Emergent cultures gave rise to centres of excellence in respect of the arts and learning. Often built along trading routes, they became economic hubs. Increasing populations densities led to: Decreased air quality. Sanitation challenges. Increased noise pollution. Ideal conditions for infectious diseases to spread. Business before pleasure With the ar

Life-death balance An increasing number of societies today have deified efficiency. Efficiency makes sense. A fundamental driver of any living organisation is to do what is necessary with the minimum expenditure of energy. For most of our time on the planet, nutrition was not just a click away. Thus each day was a balancing act in finding food without emptying our energy reserves in the process. Greed is good? This has wired us to be both greedy (who knows when the next meal

Quiz time Which of the following do you believe to bubiquitous-leadership-leaders-everywheree true in respect of business leaders? They are generally overpaid relative to the workforce. Leadership education is optimised for uncertainty. Leaders lead and managers manage. That’s right. None of them are true. Well at least for most organisations on the planet, ie those built upon industrial era factory principles. Let’s explore why. Not overpaid? Can it be right that the CEO of

Despite what the media is telling us, it is a mistake to think that sustainability, hybrid working, mental wellness and so on are our top priorities. We are unlikely to move the needle in any of these important spheres if we do not have capable leaders. The crisis we face is that very few leaders are equipped to handle these issues and the broader challenge of engaging effectively in an increasingly chaotic world. The business schools and academies tasked with developing the

Values minimisation It’s a sign of the time when leaders in some organisations earn over a thousand times more than the median company salary. Are they really that good? Or is the upper limit of employee value contribution limited by the focus on having most people in the organisation operating as process monkeys, slavishly adhering to the operations manual? In the public sector part of the core skillset appears to be avoiding getting caught. In the unlikely event that you ar

What can Cary Grant, LeBron James and Pythagoras teach us about organisational design? In this post, I make the case for a new type of organisational model that benefits the individual, the organisation and society. Let’s start at the start. There are two types of factory. Factory A: There is a visible conveyor belt along which physical components travel. Factory B: There is an invisible conveyor belt along which data travel. Both factories are staffed by lifeless robots. In