Yves Morieux: Smart Simplicity

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Yves Morieux speaking on stage. A wonderful discovery today, “As work gets more complex, 6 rules to simplify,” a TED Talk by Yves Morieux. Morieux is a senior partner in the Washington DC office of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)  and director of the BCG Institute for Organization. He studies how changes in structure can improve motivation for employees. “Smart Simplicity” uses six key rules that encourage cooperation to solve long-term problems. Not by just reducing costs and increasing profit,… Read More . . . “Yves Morieux: Smart Simplicity”

Encouraging Self-Organization

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Logo for Interaction Institute for Social Change In a workshop I conducted last Sunday, one of the participants asked, “How do you encourage self-organizationSelf-organization, sometimes called spontaneous order, is a ...?” By some miracle, probably related to my being on every mailing list on anything related to sociocracy and governance, I received in my mailbox a link to an article on the  Interaction Institute for Social Change. You guessed it on  Tips for Encouraging Self-Organization by Curtis Ogden. After some editing and… Read More . . . “Encouraging Self-Organization”

Introduction to Holacracy

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The link below is to a webinar, Introduction to Holacracy, by Brian Robertson, the founder of Holacracy.  It is very well done, a good  introduction to Holacracy—very clear and not obtuse theorizing. Since much of the structure of Holacracy is the same a sociocracy, it will also help in the understanding sociocracy. As a former software programmer, Robertson uses the operating system as an analogy. Holacracy is the operating system and the specifics of the… Read More . . . “Introduction to Holacracy”

Thinking in Systems by Donnella Meadows

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Photo of Donella Meadows I highly recommend Donnella Meadow‘s little book, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (Chelsea Green 2008). It’s short, fun, and to the point. No math or physics required. Recommended for everyone, literally. In clear, humorous, commonplace situations, Meadows explains the use of systems analysis and how it can be applied in both large-scale and individual problem solving. She moves from simple to more complex examples ultimately explaining the complex ways that feedback loops are used to… Read More . . . “Thinking in Systems by Donnella Meadows”

The Holes in Holacracy

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Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos. Photo credit: Wikipedia. An informed article by “Schumpeter” (no first name available), The Holes in Holacracy, included in the print edition as well as online. Schumpeter’s points are really about new branded methods failing.  They are gone in 10 years. (Sociocracy on which Holacracy is based has not failed in 40 years.) EVERY so often a company emerges from the herd to be lauded as the embodiment of leading-edge management thinking. Think of Toyota and its lean manufacturing… Read More . . . “The Holes in Holacracy”

Decentralized Governance of Corporate Intranets

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Nielson Norman Group Logo One of the newsletters I read is AlertBox from the Nielsen Norman Group, Jakob Nielson has long been considered the expert on website usability. NN/g does extensive research for major corporations makes the information available to the public. His newsletter this morning included a piece on trends in intranet portals, which make extensive corporate information available for use by employees. In this report I came across a surprise—a section on governance! Most often such reports… Read More . . . “Decentralized Governance of Corporate Intranets”