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The art and science of the possible

~ A celebration of non-zero sum thinking

The art and science of the possible

Category Archives: consulting

Forget IDEO’s T-shaped thinkers – enter “Meta”

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by lnedelescu in business, consulting, design thinking, human capital, innovation, knowledge, learning, Organizational Development

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Design Thinking, IDEO, Meta, Tim Brown

fuller_artzy

If you follow the latest in business thinking, you would have come across the popular – or should I say “populist” – Design Thinking (DT) movement. You might have even heard of IDEO. They are the company that turned the rather loose notion of business as “art” into a profitable consulting model. You’ve probably heard of so called “T-shaped thinkers”. According to Tim Brown and others at IDEO, T-shaped thinkers are the new Da Vincis. They master both the ability to think broadly and deeply. They are generalists and specialists at the same time.

The beauty of simple models, like IDEO’s T-shaped thinkers is they are simple to convey and remember. Their marketing power is undeniable, and they serve the consulting model superbly. But the drawback is they are often too simplistic to be accurate. In fact, I say the T-shaped thinker model is quite poor in capturing the generalist-specialist dichotomy.

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When competence is offensive

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by lnedelescu in business, consulting, Crisis, management, problem solving

≈ 1 Comment

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business, incompetence, management consulting, office politics, power games

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I remember vividly a meeting that took place a few years ago. I was a management consultant tasked by the owner of a large corporation with overseeing the creation of a new profit and loss business unit. My nemesis was a Vice President who did not want to see his power and “territorial” claims diminished by the new venture. Typical power games and office politics were very much at play. The owner liked to delegate and had a “survival of the fittest mentality” to mediating conflict.

The three of us had gotten together because the named Vice President was overtly sabotaging my efforts. He was making the case to the owner that, while the idea of the new business unit was great, the consultant was poorly fit for the job.

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A consulting industry first: strategy architected around complexity principles

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by lnedelescu in complexity, consulting, design thinking, innovation, knowledge, management, problem solving, strategy

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Alignment, complexity, Criteria, Innovation, Performance, Peter Drucker, phase transitions, Portfolio, Qualitative Leaps, Quantitative, strategy

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When people ask me what it is that I do, they often act surprised and sometimes suspicious upon hearing my answer: “I solve wicked problems with undefined parameters”; yes, really.

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Management consultants as educators

24 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, consulting, management

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Amit Goswami, Best Practices, business, Clay Christensen, complexity, Consultants, Cybernetics, Dave Snowden, Distinctions, Educators, Gurus, management, management consulting, Management Thinkers, Methods, models, Peter Checkland, Peter Drucker, Recipes, Roger Martin, Russell Ackoff, Systems

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I have heard my share of reservations about management consultants. Many see business consulting as a shallow field devoid of real substance. As the old saying about no smoke without fire goes, there is likely good reason for the distrust of this modern profession. The great Russell Ackoff himself distinguished between two types of consultants: self-promoting gurus and educators.

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A brief history of complexity and the mechanisms of resilience

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, capitalism, complexity, consulting, future, innovation, society, technology

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complexity, Craftsmanship, Reliability, Resilience

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Resilience will receive a lot of attention as the complexity of our world increases. Below is a brief description of the logical correspondence between complexity and resilience, followed by a succinct primer on mechanisms of resilience. But first, a bit of history is in order.

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Effective strategy in complex environments, or why a complex world requires abstract thinking

06 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in complexity, consulting, human capital, management, strategy, taxonomy

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Abductive Reasoning, abstract thinking, antifragility, Art, business schools, Categorization, complexity, Daniel Pink, Dave Snowden, hierarchy, integrative thinking, management consulting, Management Theory, mental models, Nassim Taleb, right brain thinking, Roger Martin, Sense Making, statistical analysis, strategy, weak-signals

dalisurreal

As I have recently argued, the world’s top strategists agree that strategy in complex, cause-and-effect blurred environments requires a unique mindset.

According to Snowden and others, in complex environments cause and effect relationships do not repeat and a categorization mindset where data is fit to preconceived notions about reality (i.e. models, frameworks, etc.) is ineffective. This by the way rules out most of the consultants who provide precisely this: prescription style, a-la-carte frameworks and models. What works are sense-making models (to understand the distinction between categorization and sense-making in the words of the world’s top strategists, see my related blog). Categorization models are fast and efficient, but may miss so called “weak signals”, comparatively insignificant data points that are simply part of the average in normal situations, but which can be the source of new emergent patterns in complex circumstances – fat tails and Black Swans respectively in Nassim Taleb parlance.

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Post-causality: a quiet global revolution in the making

05 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, capitalism, complexity, consulting, democracy, future, human capital, innovation, knowledge, management, philosophy, problem solving, society, taxonomy, technology

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Big Data, business, Categorization, causality, Cause and Effect, complexity, creativity, Cynefin, Daniel Pink, Dave Snowden, Drucker, Drucker Forum, Emergence, future, Imagination, Innovation, Knowledge, management, Methods, models, Motivation, Peter Checkland, Resilience, Revolution, Roger Martin, Russell Ackoff, Safety, Sense Making, Social Systems, Society

http://p.soledadpenades.com

If one were to cut a global cross-section through social classes, nationalities, ethnicities, ages, professions, genders, and so forth, very few commonalities would emerge. And yet, there is I propose just such a common thread: a shared causality mindset, a globally predominant belief in the supremacy of cause and effect.

Since it is people who run our institutions, this belief continues to shape our modern society and even influence to a large extent the technological outcrops of our knowledge economy. From business strategy to macroeconomic models, and from political debates to Big Data, causality is pervasive and its implications profound.

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How subtle is the psychology of communication

14 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, Communication, complexity, consulting, human capital, learning, Organizational Development, society

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Coercion, Communication, Complex Adaptive Systems, complexity, culture, Cynefin, Dave Snowden, Human Behavior, Language, Leadership, Psychology, Resonance, SenseMaker, Slogans

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I ran into this blog by Dave Snowden and I was absolutely impressed with the insights he introduces on communication being a double edged sword: illuminating on one hand, or having the potential to be used to coerce. He proposes that context-devoid slogans found on corporate posters and value statements don’t serve any educational or inspirational purpose, and rather quite the opposite: they often become tools for coercion driving a compliance organizational culture.

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Severe business crisis turn-around: turning vicious “tailspins” into virtuous dynamics

13 Monday May 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, consulting, Crisis, strategy

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business, Business Development, Crisis Turnaround, Recovery, Risk, Selectivity, strategy, Tailspin, Vicious vs. Virtuous Cycles

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Just like aviation seems to have mastered the science of stable flight, so does business look stable and predictable from afar. But at a closer look tailspins are never far-away and remain a possibility. Many companies don’t go out of business over prolonged periods of decline, but rather suddenly. The warning signs for a vicious cycle are there, but the signals are usually weak and management overlooks them until it is too late. At that point revenue spirals downward, less money is available to pursue new business resulting in a reduced probability of getting business, and the enterprise is headed straight for a spectacular crash.

I will save the details for how a company enters tailspin for another blog, but here I want to focus on the key strategy to recover from vicious cycles, and even turn them around into virtuous ones.

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It all depends: the art of problem solving

10 Friday May 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in consulting, design thinking, innovation, knowledge, learning, paradox, problem solving

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Chaos, complexity, Consulting, Dave Snowden, Disruption, Entrepreneurship, Globalization, Innovation, Intractable Problems, Introspection, Knowledge, Learning, Methodology, Open Mind, Relativity, Risk, Roger Martin, Russell Ackoff, Self-Awareness, Wicked Problems

It all Depends

Over the last decade, I’ve lived globalization, entrepreneurship, change and crisis, complexity and chaos. I must have run into at least a dozen intractable, impossible, show-stopper, nerve-racking, all-or-nothing situations and at least several orders higher magnitude wicked problems. I also ran into the entire spectrum of human behavior, what the Clint Eastwood character would call the “good, the bad, and the ugly” (I would actually add the “irrational”).

About five years ago I also started an in depth study of the cutting edge thinking related to complexity and disorder. Finally I also studied and noted my own behaviors and responses in such circumstances; like Hansel and Gretel I traced my steps into the wilderness in case I ever had to find my way back. This ability to not only act but rationalize the act has served me well, substantially increasing my awareness and lowering my stress when faced with the new and unfamiliar. It has also resulted in a problem solving and sense-making body of work which I think rivals the best of what’s available on the market. I have yet to capitalize on all this, but I have learned to be patient.

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