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.
Read More...Purpose-Based Orgs – Whose?
Popularized in 2006 by the non-profit B Lab and their launch of B Corps, the idea that it is time for profit-based businesses to change their purpose has been around for quite
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