- The 501 (c)(3) social-profit group that calls forth leadership throughout every level of the organization to design and deliver successful programs.
- The airline that requires passengers to ‘self organize’ to speed boarding times, thereby reducing ‘gate time’ of aircraft and increasing profits.
- The military commanders who devolve decision making to squad level to shorten decision cycles in the fluidity of combat to save lives.
- The tech company that develops new products by encouraging all employees to spend up to 20% of their work time pursuing ideas that fascinate them.
These are all brilliant and highly successful innovations that exemplify positive change, whether measured in expanded social capital, increased profits or avoided casualties.
But how did these organizations learn to think like that?
How did leadership find the courage to maintain authority but give up control?
How did managers learn to give direction without giving directives?
What were the epiphanies that enabled each of these changes?
In simple terms, they began – knowingly or unknowingly – to mimic natural systems. They learned to move beyond the old "command and control" models of last century MBA thinking into the bio-organic world view of the new century. They learned to tap self-organization, "distributed" leadership and continuous adaptation.
Our work at Change Factors is helping organizations upgrade their "conceptual operating systems" to open up that "epiphany space" where innovation occurs.
> We help them learn to "think like a system" in order to understand and operate in accordance with the laws of natural systems.
> We help them learn to self-facilitate, to move beyond dependence on outside consultants and "flavor of the month" management schemes.
> We help them learn to reduce the fog and friction of everyday interactions to make work less conflict-ridden, more exciting, more fun, more creative and more rewarding.
> We offer a Complex Adaptive Systems management perspective which provides powerful insights and a new toolbox that can be transformed directly into action.
These actions may include:
> self-organizing to maximize adaptation and minimize prototyping time
> surfacing and tapping the brilliance of leadership distributed throughout the organization
> configuring teams and organizations as "constructive networks" to more quickly respond to opportunities
> optimizing resilience to "black swans" and unexpected shocks
> turning unintended consequences to strategic advantage
Outcomes include stronger relationships, more resilient networks, greater organizational coherence and, most of all, better product through better process, however the bottom line is defined.
