The digital revolution changed everything. Everything, except management.
Managers of the digital age need operating models that are collaborative, ethical, and effective. Models that reveal opportunities for managers to deploy Agile and Lean methods, as well as complex situations where leadership means carefully creating the conditions for success. In other words, models that support managers’ transition from providing all the answers, to leaders who help clarify objectives and discover how to achieve them.
In this short book, I introduce The Chalice as an upgrade on the pyramid metaphor. The chalice represents an operating model that both puts customers on top and engages with the beliefs and diversity of the staff who create value for an entire ecosystem. Unique features of the chalice include:
Connecting prioritization and customer value delivery processes using feedback mechanisms as controls.
Structuring prioritization as a process, whose performance must be measured and improved.
Achieving predictable and agile delivery to customers by selecting only appropriate agile, or plan-driven, controls.
Revealing the tension sources that create conflicting priorities and confusion if not addressed directly.
Creating a pluralistic ecosystem that relies on collaboration and diversity to develop shared understanding and profit from innovation.
I provide just enough information in this book to share the big picture. I trust that more adventurous amongst you will try some of the ideas it generates in your imagination. Subsequent books will explore the sections of the chalice in more detail, building on this foundation.
Would you like to learn more about how to deal with complexity in policy analysis and evaluation?
We’re running the second iteration of the Handling Complexity training course in partnership with CECAN Centre for Evaluating Complexity Across the Nexus. The course is made up of 3-modules and is based on the Supplementary Guide to the Government’s Magenta book on evaluation:
Module 1 – Complexity and its Challenges for Policy and Evaluation Module 2 – Selecting an Appropriate Evaluation Approach Module 3 – Commissioning and Managing a Complex Evaluation
What does it mean to go back to the ground and learn the fading skills necessary to work the forest with our hands? To read the land assisted by tools we sight with our own eyes? To create new visions of old roles, such as a land steward or cottager?
I explore those thoughts and more with my guest today, Hazel, who some of you may know as Tom Ward.
Exciting news! I am thrilled to announce the first version of the combination of Value Stream Mapping and the Viable System Model, known as VSM². This concept originated from a conversation that took place in 2017 between Kristian Schweitzer and me. With VSM², you can understand how to govern a value stream more clearly and precisely.
We believe that VSM² allows a holistic view of a value-creating system by integrating the input-output-logic of the Value Stream Mapping with the steering logic of the Viable System Model.
Kudos to Martin Pfiffner for the methodology to apply the Viable System Model and respective aspects like the coloring system for the model.
We look forward to sharing more updates on VSM² in the near future!
Call for Papers to a Research Day on Innovation Venue: Excelia Business School, La Rochelle, France Date: 23 May 2024. This research day is associated with a special issue of Creativity and Innovation Management [SSCI 3.644, CABS-AJG 2**, FNEGE Rank 3, 2**]. Organisation committee for the Research Day on Innovation Poonam Oberoi, Steffen Roth, and […]
In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later.
In the selection of papers for this volume, two problems have arisen, namely what constitutes ‘systems thinking’, and what systems thinking is relevant to the thinking required for organizational management? The first problem is obviously critical. Unless there were a meaningful answer, there would be no sense in producing a volume of readings in systems thinking in any subject. A great many writers have manifestly believed that there is a way of considering phenomena which is sufficiently different from the well-established modes of scientific analysis to deserve the particular title of systems thinking. Reasons for believing that the distinction is of…
[I note that bizarrely they are still stuck in the 19th Century referring to ‘chairmen’, but hey ho]
11th WCSA WORLDWIDE HYBRID GLOBAL CONFERENCE
BRUSSELLS SEPTEMBER 10th to 15th, 2023
CONFERENCE VENUE ON SITE & ONLINE by ZOOM
SECTION ONE (I): PROLOGUE & WCSA PRESIDENTIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
As the current President of the World Complexity Science Academy (WCSA), a European-based policy-modeling think-tank headquartered in Bologna, I am delighted to launch the “2023 WCSA General Call for Papers and Panels” for our 11th Worldwide Conference in Brussels. The conference will take place hybrid, from September 10th to 15th. The conference is hereby titled:
Cybernetics #1, #2 & #3This is just a recap on different “types” of Cybernetics, at a time when there is huge overlap with Systems Thinking, Complexity Sciences and Operations Research. As you may already know, I’m sceptical of definitions being definitive in general – natural language – discourse, beyond logical – formal symbolic – arguments. That matters because most human affairs are complex and their management or governance are the former not the latter.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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