Sublime

Green is powerful as a paradigm for breaking down old structures, but often less effective at formulating practical alternatives.

ENTRY POINT #2: SYSTEMS STUDY

La démarche de David Angel à l’université Clark est une version particulièrement élaborée des objectifs que devrait se fixer tout chef d’établissement : affiner et réorganiser l’établissement autant que nécessaire pour répondre aux besoins évolutifs des élèves et de la société. Selon David, notre époque constitue le moment décisif pour diriger un é

A manager’s output = The output of his organization + The output of the neighboring organizations under his influence Why? Because business and education and even surgery represent work done by teams. A manager can do his “own” job, his individual work, and do it well, but that does not constitute his output. If the manager has a group of people re

In this approach, the CEO decides in top-down fashion, with the old powers vested in their role of CEO, to take out an essential lever of power. Take out a key staff function like the planning department, or a layer of management—for example, the first line supervisors. Or, like Zobrist did at FAVI, remove a key management tool, like the punch cloc

The fundamental problem is the reality around the executive. Unless he changes it by deliberate action, the flow of events will determine what he is concerned with and what he does.

Nevertheless we can distinguish between three broad types of approaches, a framing you might find helpful as you ponder the journey of your organization. I call them creative chaos, bottom-up redesign, and pre-existing template.

Our organizational wiring also dictates the type of feedback that is generated. Ideally, everyone gets direct and fast feedback on the work they do, so they can see the effects of their actions, which can be used to stabilize systems and improve. After all, in any complex, adaptive system, there are unexpected events and a general tendency toward e