4 years, 8 months ago

Productive Organisational Paradoxes

Here are the slides from my talk at the SCiO open day in London earlier this year. You can watch them static and download the slide-deck from here, or play it with animations below. Related posts: SASSY Architecture From Distinction to Value and Back What can Social Systems Theory bring to the VSM? QUTE: Enterprise […]

5 years, 20 days ago

What can Social Systems Theory bring to the VSM?

In 2015, when the Metaphorum was in Hull, I tried to kick off a discussion about potential contributions from cognitive science, and particularly from the Enactive school. I shared some insights and hinted at other possibilities. This year the Metaphorum conference was in Germany for the first time. It was organised by Mark Lambertz and hosted by […]

5 years, 1 month ago

Human Resources?

People are valuable. That’s why they have an established status as human resources in organizations. When they are more valuable, they are even called assets. Assets “People are our greatest asset!” You’ve probably heard that a lot. If not, try “People are our * asset” in Google, and you’ll get over 300 million results. “Greatest” […]

5 years, 11 months ago

QUTE: Enterprise Space and Time

Here’s another pair of glasses with which to look at organisations. It can be used either together with the Essential Balances or with the Productive Paradoxes, or on its own. For those new to my “glasses” metaphor, here’s a quick intro. The Glasses Metaphor As I’m sceptical about the usefulness of methodologies, frameworks and best […]

6 years, 1 month ago

Productive Paradoxes in Projects

In 2011, when I started this blog, I wanted it to be a place for reading and as such the initial theme was just a bit busier than this one. I didn’t go that far, but you still don’t see categories, tag clouds, my Twitter feed and so on. It was only recently that I […]

7 years, 2 months ago

Leadership Patterns and Anti-Patterns – The Growler

Prior to starting my career in IT (twenty years ago this month…seems like yesterday), I spent a little over eleven years in law enforcement as a Deputy Sheriff. Over those eleven years my assignments ranged from working a shift in the jail (interesting stories), to Assistant Director of the Training Academy, then Personnel Officer (even […]

7 years, 3 months ago

Learning Organizations – Shooting the Messenger All the Way to the Fuhrerbunker

Unless you’re living under a rock, it’s a near certainty that you’ve seen at least one Downfall parody video (although I hadn’t realized just how long these had been around until I started working on this post…time flies!). There’s a reason why they’ve managed to hang on as a meme as long as they have. […]