OD62: Evolving the OrgDev Newsletter ??

The Sense & Change Network, Why Your New Strategy Will Fail, Complexity Space Framework, Responsibility and Emergence, Understanding How Climate Change Works

Dear readers,

We’re back from the break and happy to reconnect with you!

We’re launching the Sense & Change Network to help you connect with other readers and to have a dedicated space to discuss Strategy & Organization matters. See details below and apply to join.

Also, we’ll switch to a twice-per-month publishing schedule to keep a sustainable pace even with future peaks of client work and we’ll continue to have a balanced mix of #practice, #reflect and #study in each edition.

As always, we’re happy to hear your thoughts and ideas - just comment or send a private message.

Wish you lots of inspiration,

Raluca & Bülent

The Sense & Change Network

Long story short: we want to make it easier to connect with other people that have an interest in #strategy, #orgdesign, #orgdevelopment, #complexity, #sustainableknowledge or any combinations of these topics.

These are all interconnected and we’ve only found professional networks or associations that explore one, max two of them together.

As our intention in general is not commercial, we’re offering free memberships to the network, based on application. For all applications we’re looking for a balance between what candidates need from the network and what they offer to others.

We’ll run the first round of applications in May, then continue with the second round in August.

What you can expect to find in the network:

• Connect to like-minded curious peers from diverse backgrounds
• Access to free monthly #orgtalks, where we tackle together specific organizational challenges
• Access to free experimental formats that we want to play with: salons, pop-up sharing on specific topics, pop-up practice sessions of specific tools or methods, case clinics, debates
• Free access to all the paid Sense & Change guides (Information Overload, Team Chemistry, Dynamic Stakeholder Mapping) for all those of you who join in May
• Chances for serendipity

Apply to join

#practice

Why Your New Strategy Will Fail

Sam Spurlin offers a practical perspective about implementing strategy.

Put plainly, a strategy cannot be “chessmastered” into business outcomes because the organization and market in which it must be operationalized are much more like a garden than a game.

Our take:

• There’s still much work to do to gain a better understanding of what strategy and implementing strategy is, when using the complexity paradigm in a business context
• We picked this article because it might inspire you to revisit some predominant mental models, like “strategist as a chessmaster” and ”big moves”

9 min read

Complexity Space Framework

Denise Easton and Larry Solow have created a framework that offers the language and distinctions for understanding and influencing the complex dynamics of an organization.

More specifically:

• Ecosystem(s) are seen as patterns in context
• Dimensions as ecosystem-wide patterns
• Linkages as connecting patterns
• States as strategic “meta” patterns in ecosystems
• Disruptions as disturbing patterns
• Catalysts as tactics to influence pattern-based change
• Indicators of pattern movements
• Navigation process as a set of questions

Our take:

• Complexity is not something that can be understood only by becoming familiar with a popular framework like Cynefin, so it might be worthwhile to explore some other creations related to complexity
• Complexity Space Framework is built on the core idea that ”patterns give form and function to the dynamics in an organization”
• The unique angle that this framework brings is around types of organizational patterns and their specific properties

We recommend the book that explains the whole framework and also shares some practical case studies. Enjoy!

2h read

#reflect

What is the nature of the connection between responsibility and emergence?

#study

Understanding How Climate Change Works

We invite you to take a closer look at these two articles that explain how climate change works. Is there anything in there that might inspire your work?

Our take:

• Constant exposure to specific terms increases familiarity with them, which in turn might bring a false sense of understanding those terms. We were truly surprised to find out how little we understood climate change before reading these articles
• The two articles are super dense in examples of how everything is interconnected, so much that we’re going to use them as pre-reads in the Systems Thinking workshops that we facilitate
• What good analogies would you find for the weather-climate duo in an organizational context?
• Weather patterns, climate patterns, circulation patterns - could these serve as metaphors for what happens inside or around organizations?
• “It might not seem intuitive that as global temperature warms, some areas of the Earth could grow cold. However, that’s why it’s important to look at the bigger picture. Overall, global temperature goes up, but regional and local effects depend on the factors that drive climate in these places.” - could there be parallels with the global direction of an organization along with movements towards the opposite direction in parts of the same organization?
• Serious food for thought: Catastrophes happening thanks to inaction e.g. positive feedback loops left unchecked - “As climate warms, more ice melts, and as more ice melts, climate warms”

Links:

• Massive Science: Most people don’t really understand how climate change works
• Massive Science: This is how climate change is reshaping the entire planet

Thanks for reading

We hope you found something useful in this edition. See you again in two weeks!

This newsletter is curated by Raluca and Bülent Duagi, the Sense & Change team.

As Strategy & Organization professionals, we're partnering with visionary Tech companies to help them address their most complex strategic & organizational challenges.

Our professional mission and intended legacy is:

Creating and sharing sustainable knowledge that helps people deal with the complex challenges they (will) face.