By John Atkinson Consultants do love their models. They’re seductive. LinkedIn is an endless stream of people showcasing some framework that offers the world an answer. The egotistical even put their names to them. I
integrity matters, in all senses of the word. Look at things in the whole and spot the patterns. Are these helping or hindering your operation? What gives rise to them? Integrity requires saying what you
Healthy systems are beautifully connected.Some are conscious like running or jumping, some are autonomic like breathing or heartbeats.
When business environments change, businesses must change or become irrelevant. There’s plenty of good case examples of those that have done this successfully and those that have not.
The North Atlantic Gannet is a seabird that mates for life. Each season they have one egg, one chick. The chick takes 4-5 years to reach maturity. It’s a zero defect policy. The energy involved
The perspective someone uses when viewing the pandemic has a major influence on what they are prepared to act on, and how they will act.
The real work is not in describing either the current world or a new one. It is in accompanying those who are trying to change in this current one. This is the second horizon or
It isn’t that reports, policies, pilots and outcomes are bad things. It is that systems change doesn’t occur by focusing on these things in isolation.
Do you go with the flow or stand in its face? When the currents of opinion and action are too strong, to stand alone in their face is to be swept away. If you build
For this reason I rejected the notion of a competence model of leadership. When head of a national leadership centre my refusal to adopt such a model or necessarily comply with others’ models drew sharp
For all of us, our first work with new systems can seem daunting. Our existing networks and knowledge may be helpful but insufficient in this new domain. We must work out what to do, who
At its best, systems leadership seems to exhibit an almost magical sense of the possible. Where people are locked in apparently intractable complexity, systems leadership seems to open up a new way through the mess.
The reality is that leadership through large, complex and politically contested issues can be very tough on the people involved. It challenges our perception as to what is for the best, and how best to
‘Resilient’ was the first word mentioned when we explored recently how you might need to be in order to work effectively with change through the lens of living systems. You can see why. Being repeatedly
So what would happen if we changed the way we thought about this. What would happen if we stopped thinking about what we might better prescribe as the route to change? What if we thought