John Seddon [video]:: Target Obsession Disorder laid bare.

John Seddon explains why targets make organisations worse and controlling costs makes costs higher. If you’re in management or in executive leadership you desperately need to watch this and know it, understand it and listen to it. For the benefit of yourself, those around you and those that interact with you business.

John breaks out why targets make organisations worse and controlling, or managing costs, actually makes them higher. He explains, in a rather entertaining way, why the public sector along with the private sector is doing horribly compared to what they should be doing…a bi-product of  ‘conventional ignorance’.

This elegant dissection of the organisational madness that pervades our culture was given at the 2009 conference of the Human Givens Institute.

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Gain the competitive edge by learning from natural rules

I already knew that Giles was a bright guy (I wish I could say I have already read his book!) and that we are on a very similar wavelength BUT, if you have read any of my past blogs you will recognise a familiar message in the following extract. I know that the Executive Leadership Group with whom I have been working to form ‘Resilient Communities Network’ [RCN], AIBC & TBORI-UK have heard it all before from me but it can do no harm for them and others to hear it from another…

Akin to living systems
To succeed in business we must be agile, creative, alert, spontaneous and responsive – often operating in completely new ways. Today’s rapidly changing business environment calls for businesses that thrive in rapidly changing environments: businesses more akin to living systems.

The Nature of Business:: achieving through leading

That stats below merit some thought or discussion I would have thought!?

This is a Knowledge Economy of willing Risk Leaders, being starved of the liquidity of an Innovation Economy, by the discredited policies of political and financial institutions.

Unless we STOP constraining living business systems, with the structures, philosophies and values of a past era, we will fail to adapt to the complexity of systemic information-flow.

With the ability, for any firm, to measure and monitor business resilience on-line comes the capacity to better understand and build, measurably resilient; interdependent; sustainable; communities of dynamic networks and systems of sub-systems, with shared values, risks and rewards as the basis for an adaptable, sustainable and equitable platform for Responsible Capitalism.

In 1986 the average knowledge worker carried in their heads 75% of the knowledge they needed to do their job. By 2006 the average had dropped to 8%, today it’s around 5%, and within 10 years the average will be 1%. (ref. Carnegie-Mellon rolling study by Robert Kelley).

This is a paradigm shift. To succeed as a 1% knowledge worker requires learning different capabilities to before, not just trying harder. This is hitting leadership roles hardest, soonest. Leadership today requires much that leadership used to require; and a lot more that is part of a different paradigm.

As Peter Drucker said:

in times of turmoil, the danger lies not in the turmoil, but in facing it with yesterday’s logic.

via Leading with Love « The Nature of Business.

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World Economic Forum:: New Models of Leadership–John Maeda

As far as I can recall, I first came across the name of John Maeda from this beautifully succinct quote:

“Openness simplifies complexity”

A decent introduction to anyone, I think you’ll agree. Particularly when you have spent years trying to convey the need for and merits of TRANSPARENCY; the costs associated with AMBIGUITY and risks created by excessive COMPLEXITY.

John Maeda is President of the Rhode Island School of Design and is a Member of the Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership.

Discussions this year from the Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership culminated in a white paper, which describes a set of competencies for leaders in the 21st century. A central thesis of our work is the need for leaders to be agile in what are increasingly volatile and complex times.

Leadership is a service process

I hadn’t specifically considered the ‘leadership’ role as connecting the operational dots but, having identified the worst traits of ‘leaders’ in the prevailing culture, it is beneficial to reiterate the importance of effective information-flow amongst the constituent processes within an organisation.

We always need to remember that INTER-CONNECTED ISN’T INTERDEPENDENT and the most effective, resilient, systems ARE interdependent!

In the future executives are no longer meant to ‘occupy’ structures in order to use them for executing power and status, but are rather expected to create added value-oriented, sustainable processes and to understand leadership as a supportive service process. “The best companies are moving away from purely hierarchical organizational structures…

http://prmarketingcommunication.com/2012/10/16/leadership-is-a-service-process/