The Side Effects of Hierarchy and Other Perils

A few days ago, in a con­ver­sa­tion with Amy Edmond­son of the Har­vard Busi­ness School, she sage­ly shared with me how hier­ar­chy “does not intend” its neg­a­tive side effects. She was speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly of ingrained dynam­ics that cause peo­ple to seek approval and avoid rock­ing the boat rather than ask­ing for help and speak­ing up… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Side Effects of Hier­ar­chy and Oth­er Perils

A Spiral Model of Change

I have always felt that orga­ni­za­tion­al change sim­ply could not be lin­ear. Some­how the notion that shifts in struc­ture, cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, process­es and sys­tems could be intro­duced accord­ing to some fixed recipe has always griev­ed me, as if it missed the most impor­tant com­po­nents, the deep­er human­i­ty of chang­ing what is toward what can or… Con­tin­ue read­ing A Spi­ral Mod­el of Change

On Interconnection…And Yet

We know, at bot­tom, that every­thing is con­nect­ed.  It’s like the joke about the monk who orders a hot dog: “Make me one with every­thing.” We’re already there. We get that.  And yet. Indeed. In fact. And yet. We treat our­selves as indi­vid­u­als. We oper­ate in a com­pet­i­tive, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly entre­pre­neur­ial world of “best ideas,” “best knowl­edge,” “best… Con­tin­ue read­ing On Interconnection…And Yet