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. […]

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 407

This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 407, features Tom’s essay on Test Driven Development, Kim Pries on what makes software “good”, Steve Tendon on TameFlow, and a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Learning to Deal with the Inevitable”. Change is inevitable, dealing with it effectively […]

Organizations as Systems – “Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown”

  One of the benefits of having a (very) wide range of interests is that every so often a flash of insight gets dropped into my lap. In this case, it was a matter of “We must recognise that single events have multiple causes” showing up as a suggested read from Aeon on the same […]

Methods for whole-enterprise architecture – Keep it simple

For a viable enterprise ­architecture [EA], now and into the future, we need frameworks, methods and tools that can support the EA discipline’s needs. One crucial criterion is that any methods and frameworks we use must support fractality – the same patterns, regardless of scope

“Distance…is the one true enemy…”

Gregory Brown tweeted a great series on the problem of distance last week: It’s amazing how much information can be conveyed in nine tweets. It’s amazing how many aspects of a very complex socio-technical undertaking, software development, are affected by this concept of distance. I would argue that this concept of distance applies likewise to […]

When Will We Learn?

We’ve all heard the sayings about history repeating. Did we pay attention? Did we actually hear what was said, or were we just in the room when it was mentioned? Did we learn anything? Greger Wikstrand and I have been trading posts on innovation for more than seven months. His last post, “Black hat innovation”, […]

Making sense in disruption

An unexpected referendum result in one smallish country that triggers business-uncertainty on a literally worldwide scope and scale: that’s Brexit. A nice example, in fact, of what’s really meant by the term ‘disruption‘. What happens when those ‘rules’ by which

Skating to Where the Puck Will Be

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. Wayne Gretzky   Business people have a thing for sports metaphors, and this one in particular is a favorite. So much so, that Jason Kirby in “Why businesspeople won’t stop using that Gretzky quote” observed: Its popularity has much to […]

Another SCAN crossmap: Kolb Learning Styles

Another SCAN crossmap – this time with the Kolb Learning Styles model – that may well be useful in the knowledge-management and skills-development-space. It was first spotted by Archi co-developer Jean-Baptiste Sarrodie – many thanks, JB! I’ll let JB set

Learning to Deal with the Inevitable

  My last post, “Barriers to Innovation”, began with a question. Is innovation inevitable? By the end of the post, that question had changed. Is innovation inevitable for your organization? Tom Cagley left a comment suggesting another change: Think about changing the question again. “Is innovation inevitable?” might be better stated as “Is change inevitable?” […]