Innovation - Productivity - Creativity
A ratchet only spins in one direction and then locks into place, so the Ratchet Effect describes systems and behaviours that easily move forward but heavily resist going back. During a crisis (think of airports post 9/11, or the COVID-19 pandemic) , governments and institutions may raise taxes/prices or create new rules. Citizens accept this out of necessity. But when the crisis ends, things…
Positive Deviance is a strength-based approach with some core principles: Communities possess the solutions and expertise to best address their own problems These communities are self-organising with sufficient human resources and assets to derive solutions to communal problems Communities possess a ‘collective intelligence’, equally distributed through the community, which the approach seeks to…
The price that made it right to centralise might be disappearing. Whilst artificial intelligence doesn't eliminate the need for a centre it fundamentally redefines its purpose. Rather than managing the centre becomes enabling. Rather than seeking consistency the centre can promote local variation and innovation. Rather than requiring managers to do work about work, AI can do that work for them ,…
The finite pool of attention is not a myth; it is a profound biological and psychological constraint that shapes every facet of our economy and landscape. The relentless pressure of immediate targets forces our brains into a reactive survival mode, crowding out the abstract, complex thinking required to safeguard our future.
The modern administrative state is still trapped in the paradox of standardisation: a situation where the relentless pursuit of narrow, technical efficiency through the measurement of anything and everything, actually manufactures the very demand it seeks to manage.
Organisational Main Character Syndrome (OMCS) is when an institution stops viewing itself as a collaborative partner in a wider ecosystem and instead adopts the persona of a singular hero with a unique purpose.
The idea that constant distraction and fragmented attention are purely modern, digital-era phenomena is directly challenged by Henry Mintzberg's 1973 study, The Nature of Managerial Work. Through direct observation of executives long before the advent of email and smartphones, Mintzberg shattered the classical idea that managers were reflective, systematic planners who spent large blocks of time…
The concept of the Overton Window the range of ideas, policies, and arguments deemed acceptable to the mainstream population was developed in the early 1990s by Joseph P. Overton, an electrical engineer turned policy wonk. Overton maintained that think tanks could influence public policy without directly engaging in the political process. He observed [ ]
In 1988 Phil. S. Ensor coined the term the functional silo system. His contention was that narrow, specialised teams and jobs were easy to manage, but imposed damaging learning disabilities on the organisation. As every function focuses on its own objectives and KPIs – the organisation slowly becomes reactive. We become focused on addressing tactical fixes rather than exploring [ ]
In late 2024, Scottish midfielder Scott McTominay moved from Manchester United to Napoli. He was an elite athlete, at the peak of physical performance, who had spent all his life in the UK. Yet, within weeks of arriving in Southern Italy, he went viral for a comment about a tomato. I never ate them at [ ]