Tag Archives: competition

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea..." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  Business journalism is saturated with the last half-century's collective wisdom on what makes a good leader. That's great, but sifting through it is sometimes like boiling the ocean. Often we're left wondering about scale: How much of that greatness is a direct result of the leader's style and decisions, and how much of it is about who and what activity surrounds the leader? Like trying to pin down what makes a good film, it's not so easy anymore to separate the auteur from the script, the actors, the editors, the crew...Why? Because most organizations today are complex networks of internal and external stakeholders. Like a great director, a great leader today is really a network orchestrator.  

“O Captain, My Captain”? or “a man of many notions”?

  I like boat metaphors. Traditionally, the leader of an organization is the one who’s supposed to steer the boat, which requires both a tactical mastery of the boat itself and a strategic (and in the best cases, intuitive) understanding of the waters and the wind. These days, though, it gets harder and harder to separate ourselves from the ocean and the others navigating its waters, because together we are mapping new lands at an astonishing pace. Look at what e... Read more

A background in geology made one thing certain for Christine Lloyd: Nature isn’t made of straight lines. Neither are people, the prima materia of organizations. “I often use water as a metaphor in systems work,” she says. “When I get stuck on an organizational problem, I always think back to ‘what would the flow of water do here?’” Those may sound like words uttered by a philosopher, but they’re grounded in science. The theoretical foundation of Chris’ work is complex adaptive systems, using whole systems thinking to help steer organizations and their leaders through periods of complex and unpredictable change. Chris’ work has taken her around the world and through diverse industries. She has served as a senior executive in blue chip organizations such as Shell, ICI, Nokia, Cancer Research UK and UNICEF. What wisdom can be gained from 20 years of applying systems science to massive organizational transformations? As our world becomes more complex, our organizations (like anything in nature) must also complexify in order to meet the demands of their environment. Drawing from her pioneering work with Nokia and UNICEF, Chris shared with d4e how she created innovative network structures to make change and innovation easier in a VUCA world — bef... Read more