Why do we create frameworks? Every discipline does it. Business has SWOT analysis and Porter’s Five Forces. Psychology has Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the Big Five personality traits. Biology has Darwin’s
Read More...Irreversible Corrective Action
After graduating university, my first real job was a supervisor at General Motors’ V6 engine plant in St. Catharines. This was a new state-of-the-art production line equipped with the latest automation and advanced
Read More...Why Is It So Hard to Imagine Organizations Differently?
I’ve been thinking about organizations for a long time—not just how to improve them, but how they are designed. What holds them together. Why they look—and behave—the way they do. A few years ago,
Read More...Beyond Chaos and Control: Imposed vs Shared Order
When people first hear my critique of top-down organizations, the response is often immediate and predictable: “If you remove hierarchy, won’t everything fall apart?” It is a fair question, but it reveals
Read More...Time Doesn’t Create Collaboration. Design Does.
“We were lucky.” That’s how one participant described their team experience at the end of a leadership program I helped facilitate at the Banff Centre. After just five days, their team had
Read More...Haier Revisited: The Limits of Autonomy
A few years ago, I wrote about Haier HERE after reading a Harvard Business Review article on “The End of Bureaucracy.” My conclusion at the time was simple: impressive—but not quite there.
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