I have often said that as a manager, you aren’t responsible for having an answer to every question or making every decision. That doesn’t mean your expertise and experience don’t matter. They do, especially when you are mentoring others…

Every week or so, someone will post the Simon Sinek quote, “You don’t hire for skills. You hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” The problem with this quote is that it assumes other people in the company…

A recent Twitter conversation inspired me with @edbatista to think more about searches and journeys. I started to come up with a typology of searches: In general, there are searches where you know what you are looking for in…

One of the hot fads right now is ecosystems. HBR went so far as to say, “Today’s CEOs Don’t Just Lead Companies. They Lead Ecosystems.” While the article is interesting in asking leaders to think about the interconnectedness of…

I recently completed a course on Critical Systems Theory with Michael C Jackson—author of Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity. In this course, over 8 weeks, we covered multiple systems-based approaches for handling technical, process, structural, organizational,…

When you lie on your deathbed thinking about your life, will you consider yourself successful? What would your definition of being successful be? I would argue that it is hard to form that definition in advance. I have never…

In 2015, I was beginning first to explore complex systems, and I discovered System Dynamics. When people talk about systems thinking with any modeling rigor, they often mean Systems Dynamics. It is often considered an approach to dealing with…

This week’s book is not on complexity per se but looks at the role of metrics which can be detrimental when managing complexity. As many of us have just completed our OKRs for Q2, now is a good time…