No-Hierarchy

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Why is accountability always a challenge, and how can it be improved?

Why is accountability always a challenge, and how can it be improved?

Most people see accountability issues as a problem in management. We believe that there is a lot of what management and leadership can do to improve accountability, but the root for accountability issues are more related to the underline system of connections between people and policies the company is running on.

Each one of us has accountabilities. Some of them are intrinsic, we took them.…

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What creates conflicts at work and how to resolve part of it?

What creates conflicts at work and how to resolve part of it?

Conflicts at work have not just a bad influence on people they have a bad influence on our economy. Based on an estimation of 2.5 hours a week that are spent on conflicts and resolving them, the total toll of conflicts on the market is around $400B a year. 

Poor communication, personality Clashes, different work styles and values, workplace competition, conflicting goals, conflicting needs,…

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Why is communication a recurring problem and how to resolve part of it?

Why is communication a recurring problem and how to resolve part of it?

Communication always appears on the top ten list of opportunities companies need to take care of. It doesn’t matter who answers the survey, communication will be there. One of the key challenges with communication is that it has many interpretations seen differently by people. 

Some people will see communication problems associated with what was communicated, some will be bothered by when…

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How to use simulation to depict the impact of a solution on a business problem. This video is part of a series of videos that explain how to take a simple business problem, visually depict it in two models, find the cause, suggested a solution, and use simulation to see the impact of a proposed change. 

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How to use agile structure to build the best team and the best organization

How to use agile structure to build the best team and the best organization

In this post, I’ll try to explain how agile structure, which based on familiar and very successful structures around us, can be leveraged to create successful teams and organizations.

Atoms and molecules that are the foundation for everything around us, they are also the foundation for an agile structure for organizations. In a nutshell, the concept sees Atoms as groups in organizations and…

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Tools to deal with complexity, chaos, and entropy

Tools to deal with complexity, chaos, and entropy

Complexity, chaos, and entropy have one thing in common. They all thrive on interactions, impacts, and flow between elements of any system. Having 500 individuals with no interactions between them doesn’t create any complexity. Having five people with interactions and all three elements above kick into action. 

Focusing on interactions, impacts, and flows focuses on the underlying system that…

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Focus on groups, not individuals Companies can be improved by focusing on people or focusing on groups. Focusing on groups can create a competitive advantage in a complex business environment. Focusing on people was a fit for a more simple business environment.

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 15: Taking advantage of complexity

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 15: Taking advantage of complexity

After discussing how we can leverage entropy and chaos, it’s about time to deal with complexity. I kept it to the end, as there are many options and ways to leverage complexity. Most of them contradict our current thinking and mental models. We can use complexity to increase organization operations and efficiencies. Complexity is also one of the best leverage to gain a competitive advantage.

T…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 14: Taking advantage of entropy

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 14: Taking advantage of entropy

I already discussed entropy in my previous posts. I’m dedicating this post to how we can turn entropy into a competitive advantage.  There are four ways we can leverage the understanding of entropy to our advantage.

1) Don’t let a company deteriorate or get into equilibria. The essence of entropy is that with no invested effort any system (including an organization) will decline. On the other…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 13: Taking advantage of chaos

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 13: Taking advantage of chaos

So far we discuss which daily task we should take to understand and adjust to complexity. We spend time on chaos and entropy that are elements or byproducts of complexity. My next three posts are about how to take advantage of them. If it’s the first post you are reading in my series about leveraging complexity, I encourage you to read all the previous 12 posts on my blog.

We can leverage…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 12: equifinality - No one best way!

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 12: equifinality – No one best way!

This is a simple but powerful concept coined by both general biologists and the father of “General System Theory” (Ludwig von Bertalanffy). Two ideas are the basis of this concept. First, in an open system, there is no one best way to reach a goal (or certain state). Second, not all the viable options are equally efficient, but we can’t know which one more efficient ahead of time.

As we…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 11th: How long are the boundaries of your group?

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 11th: How long are the boundaries of your group?

Have you ever heard about the coastline paradox? In a nutshell, because of the fractal structure of the shoreline, as we decrease the measurement unit, the coastline will be longer. Due to the continuous feature of fractals, there isn’t any way to do an exact calculation of what is the length of the shore. 

Is the same rule applies to the boundaries of groups in organizations? Is it easy and…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 11th: Dealing with uncertainty?

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 11th: Dealing with uncertainty?

When we can’t predict what are all the results of our actions, we are dealing with uncertainty. Since the first humans found out that there are unpleasant surprises hidden in the future, uncertainty is a challenge for mankind. Since those days, we have developed many mechanisms to handle uncertain. Humans always try to resolve uncertainty by controlling the future. Yet, uncertainty surprises…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 10th: Closed or Open system?

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 10th: Closed or Open system?

What are “open” and “close” systems

Open and closed systems are terms that were coined in physics more specific in thermodynamics. Open systems are systems that their parts can interact with the environment and close systems are systems that their parts can’t interact with the environment.  

In more detail, systems are defined as closed and open based on the ability of the particles and…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 9th: Fractals can turn from an art to a disaster

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 9th: Fractals can turn from an art to a disaster

Fractals are all around us. They are a simple structure with simple multiple rules that create very complex structures. snowflakes, leaves, trees, rivers, and clouds are all examples of fractals. The simple rules of fractals create a relationship between one element and may other smaller replications contained within. 

Fractals are one characteristic of chaotic and complex systems. Fractals…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 8th: the centralization - decentralization pendulum

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 8th: the centralization – decentralization pendulum

We all familiar with the pendulum of centralization and decentralization. We see it not just in the organizations, but also in technologies and other aspects of life. This pendulum is an effort to keep stability. When one of the above systems is being too extreme, it’s balanced by moving in the opposite direction. That is a known cycle that helps us predict (in high level) where we will be.

Co…

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Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 7th: Entropy and tipping points

Daily leadership activities to leverage complexity. 7th: Entropy and tipping points

Entropy is a disorder of a system. In simple terms, the disorder of a system is the number of not ordered parts of a system. Disorder is preventing systems to perform work optimally. Entropy is not how mass the system is, but the number of the possible states the system can take. In pure science, it will be how energy stored in bonds between atoms is spread. 

Atoms & bonds? isn’t that sound…

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