I’ve often struggled with the notion of definitions when working in organizations. On the one hand, too many of us hide our ignorance and uncertainty behind a wall of jargon and terminology. Terms fall in and out of favor and their relationship to the underlying real world is often less important than their value from a [...]
Tagged Knowledge work, OrganizationRussell Ackoff was one of the seminal thinkers in systems models of organization. Here is a short talk of his from 1994 that provides an excellent introduction to the topic. Learning to see and understand the systems behavior of organizations is an excellent antidote to much of the mythology around organizations that functions in lieu of more [...]
Tagged Ackoff, systemsI continue to be impressed by the insight and subtlety of the folks who put together xkcd. If you fancy yourself an organizational designer or believe that you are at the top of a food chain, you might want to consider this cartoon:
Tagged OrganizationMorry Fiddler is a friend and one of my personal trusted advisors. During one of our recent breakfasts, he recommended the following TED talk by Simon Sinek on how leaders inspire action. Since then, I’ve found myself weaving Sinek’s thinking into my own work and recommending it to others. I also made a point [...]
Tagged Organization, StrategyLast week, JoAnn Becker and I ran an interactive discussion with the monthly TLA Manager’s breakfast meeting here in Chicago. We had a lively and excellent debate among a group of technology executives, health care executives, and other smart people about the real challenges of successfully deploying information technology to improve productivity and quality in [...]
Tagged Design, health care, Knowledge workThought leadership risks becoming an empty marketing phrase just as it becomes essential to long term success. In an idea economy more and more firms understand the importance of getting credit for being on the leading edge, but getting credit is best preceded by actually being there. Organizations that depend on generating and exploiting ideas [...]
Tagged Knowledge work, Learning, reflectionImage via Wikipedia Andy Lippman, at MIT’s Media Lab, offers provocative examples of learning how to think in network terms when designing services in a recent blog post from the Communications Futures Program at MIT. At the very heart of the Internet’s design is a notion called the end-to-end principle (PDF). The best network is [...]
Tagged Design, end-to-end, Social mediaLike everyone else who’s awake, my long-time friend and colleague Keri Pearlson and I have been trying to make sense out of the uptake of new "social" technologies into organizations. We are noodling on the hypothesis that the CIO represents the best choice if an organization wants to develop a social technology strategy that is [...]
Tagged Enterprise 2.0, Social mediaBefore Lotus Notes or SharePoint we had Happy Hour. Arthur Andersen/Accenture grabbed an early lead in knowledge sharing because it recognized the value of a liquor license long before there was even a technological environment capable of supporting the likes of Notes or SharePoint. Their efforts demonstrate why successful knowledge management is rooted in the [...]
Tagged Knowledge Management, knowledge sharingOne of the defining characteristics of Enterprise 2.0 implementation efforts according to Andy McAfee, among others, is the presence of emergent behaviors in the organization as participants interact with and adapt to new technology functions and features. The notion of ‘emergent behavior’ is pretty well established in the study of complex systems. Yet it still [...]
Tagged Design, Knowledge work
