Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
I tried to explain earlier how distinction brings forth meaning, and then value. Starting from distinction may seem arbitrary. Well, it is. And while it is, it is not. That wouldn’t be very difficult to show, but until then, let’s first t…
Here are the “slides” from a new session on “Essential Balances in Organisations” delivered last month in Brussels. I had some troubles with Slideshare recently. Now it seems stable but in case the presentation is not accessible there, you can download the same PDF from here. Tweet This Post
That is what several people asked me in the last few weeks. I have even made one quick attempt to answer but then I realised that the topic deserves more clarification. While I have a lot of sympathy for those that object to ‘Best Practice’ as a name – even more – to those that object […]
That was the topic of a talk I gave in October last year at an Enterprise Architecture event in London. These are the slides, or most of them, anyway. They probably don’t tell the story by themselves and I’m not going to help them here unless this post provokes a discussion. What I’ll do instead […]
These are part of the frames from the projects-flavour of the “Essential Balances” theme, delivered in a workshop format at a training event yesterday in Athens. Tweet This Post
I’ve been arguing repeatedly that trying to get the Viable System Model from overviews, introductions and writings based on or about it, can put the curious mind in a state of confusion or simply lead to wrong interpretations. The absolute minimum is reading at least once each of the three books explaining the model. But […]
The “slides” supporting my talk on Requisite Inefficiency a couple of months ago have been on Slideshare since then but I haven’t had the time to share them here. Which I do now. The various manifestations of Requisite Inefficiency in both organisms and organisations can be understood by observing the maintenance of balances between homeostasis […]
Can you deal with it? It is amazing how language evolved to adapt to reductionist mindset. “Deal”, which originated from divide and initially meant only to distribute and then to trade, is now used as synonym for cope, manage and control. We manage things by dividing them. We eat elephants peace by peace, we start […]
The cybernetic concept of variety is enjoying some increase in usage. And that’s both in frequency and in number of different contexts. Even typing “Ross Ashby” in Google Trends supports that impression. In the last two years the interest seems stable, while in the previous six – non-existing, save for the lonely peak in May […]
Was it Lisbon that attracted me so much or the word Cybernetics in the sub-title or the promise of Alberto Manuel that it would be a different BPM conference? May be all three and more. As it happened, the conference was very well organised and indeed different in a nice way. The charm of Lisbon […]
In his latest article Ancient Wisdom teaches Business Processes, Keith Swenson reflects on an interesting story told by Jared Diamond. In short, the potato farmers in Peru used to scatter their strips of land. They kept them that way instead of amalgamating them which would seem like the most reasonable thing to do. This turned […]
One source of complexity in organizational design is the requirement for various forms of regulation and governance. This requirement results in significant levels of bureaucracy and management overhead, as seen across much of the public sector as well…