For several decades, individuals, organizations and economies juggled the increasing impacts of global forces in their attempts to both understand and capitalize on these disruptive changes. As the dust from this chaos begins to settle, research suggests the following four…
Having a new perspective alludes to using all six senses — intuition as well as taste, touch, smell, sound and sight — to deduce what is real. Intuition, our sixth sense, is our brain’s and body’s ability to sense truth and make good decisions without having to rely solely on using empirical evidence (observation or experience) and analytical reasoning (theory or logic).
Whether your entrepreneurial spirit is showing up as an artist, a yoga teacher, a widget producer or an organization designer, most seemingly solo enterprise owners would agree that we can no longer “go it alone.” The complexity of business and the speed at which change is occurring require us to partner with those who have the information and skills we lack. Collaboration has become, without a doubt, the new normal when it comes to inventing and coordinating work. Of the four major projects I am currently working on, all are collaborations that involve anywhere from two to seven contributors.
Developing an organizational vision with the long-term capabilities of both people engagement and product or service innovation requires bringing the entire organization into the planning room. Organizations are complex entities with people, processes and systems all needing to be coordinated…
I am currently doing two things I really love — reinventing myself and collaborating with a like-spirited person. Over the past eight months, my dear friend, Chris, and I met once a week in a self-designed discovery process. Its purpose…
Assimilating the interconnected, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous—iVUCA—demands of our current socio-economic environment can trigger considerable stress in our work and workplaces. The upside of these potentially more stressful experiences is we are witnessing a significant transformation in how we…
For decades, organizations and individuals spent most of their energy attempting to continuously improve their performance. Until the advent of Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Psychology, the process often used to bring about these improvements was to focus on what we…
In a recent conference call with employees from the United Food Workers (UFW) Union, I shared two case studies of STS (socio-technical systems) designing in which I was the consultant-member of the organizations’ design teams. Both of the case studies…
Ecosystems are not a new phenomenon. The term has existed in relation to the natural environment since 1934 when coined by British ecologist Arthur Tansley and defined as the flow of energy and material through ecological systems. Today, the term’s…
In his 1990 book, Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration, Michael Schrage wrote that collaboration added real value by creating both better ideas and better work. Unquestionably, we see this truth demonstrated throughout the many collective systems in current…
Customers [and employees] expect exceptional experiences and have plenty of other choices should you not rise to the occasion. Lior Arussy As we are learning in our workplaces, the Millennials (Generation Y) are not good at following orders because they want…
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