IBM recently released the 2010 Global CEO Survey, its 4th such study since 2004, based on over 1,500 face-to-face interviews with private sector CEOs and senior public sector leaders from 33 different industries spread over sixty countries. A concise summary, drawing on work by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, is below. In the past three studies, CEOs consistently said that coping with change was [...]
Archive for the ‘Institutions’ Category
Global CEO survey reveals primary challenge as addressing the ‘complexity gap’
Posted in Financial crisis, Institutions, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Reports and Studies on June 8, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Gazing at the fingerprints of chaos in the UK elections
Posted in Campaigns, Chaos, Institutions, Leadership, Public Policy on May 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
In the middle of the 19th century, one of the most widely publicised scientific struggles was to predict the motion of planetary bodies. Using Newtonian mechanics, it was simple enough to calculate the trajectory of one or two planets. However, when a third was added into the mix, the equations become complex and incomprehensible. Steven Strogatz described [...]
What happens when you are busy making other plans
Posted in Climate change, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Strategy on April 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
John Lennon famously quipped that life was what happened when you were busy making other plans. A new book Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice from the fantastic STEPS centre at the University of Sussex focuses on how much the same contradiction plays out in the global movements toward development, environmental sustainability and social justice. [...]
Latest in “aid net-oric”?
Posted in Facilitation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Networks, Public Policy on April 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
A recent piece of work has led to the coining of the phrase ‘aid net-oric’ (pron: net-er-ik) – a form of rhetoric which applies to exaggerated and bombastic use of the term ‘network’ in the aid sector. Once you start looking, you can see potential examples of ‘aid net-oric’ everywhere, from political manifestos to organisational [...]
The collapsing aid system: slow, uneven, with winners and losers
Posted in Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Organisations on April 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Owen Barder recently used a few examples of the work of complexity thinkers, notably Clay Shirker and Joseph Tainter, to suggest that the aid system may be due to collapse imminently, because its own internal complexity would reduce its resilience to the changes that are happening around it. It’s a powerful argument, and one which is worth building [...]
Three recent articles on complexity and aid-related issues
Posted in Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Networks, Reports and Studies, Self organisation, Strategy, Traffic on April 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Owen Barder on the coming collapse of the development system and on the need for variation and selection in improving the aid system Bill Easterly on spontaneous order on getting cabs in New York, and the relevance for development. Susan Curran on the complexity of cooperation, drawing from a seminar at the James Martin 21st [...]
Is Your Job An Open System?
Posted in Institutions, Leadership, Organisations on January 14, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Bill Tate is a leadership specialist who focuses on the use of systems approaches to understand and improve leadership development. On his new Systemic Leadership blog, he has written about the challenge of writing and fulfilling job descriptions in a complex environments. His ideas have some resonance with a popular November 2009 post on the Peter Principle and [...]
Coping with Complexity in Agricultural Water Management
Posted in Agriculture, Institutions, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Water on January 12, 2010 | 1 Comment »
An 2009 IFAD report highlights the importance of complexity for improving agricultural water management. It suggests that conventional project management approaches are not suitable for coping with complexity-oriented interventions, and also emphasises the importance of combining professional competence and complexity-related capabilities for achieving programmatic success. The paper is ‘geared towards promoting further discussions and reflections, [...]
