🌿🧭🌳 OD101: Organizational Metaphors
Curated resources on Strategy ∙ Org Design ∙ Org Development ∙ Adjacent fields
Starters
1 of 4 / PwC: The overlooked power of day-to-day dynamism - Insightful research about project-level and business-level resource allocation, that speaks about the importance of having guidelines and policies for how projects start, accelerate, decelerate and stop.
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2 of 4 / Kyle Tibbitts: Rate-of-learning: the most valuable startup compensation - ”Rate-of-learning is the velocity at which you are aggregating new insights and deploying them in ways that build value.” Useful concept not only for individuals, but also for teams and organizations.
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3 of 4 / Offbeat: The Offbeat Fellowship - In the same realm of learning and development, the Offbeat team has just launched a generous subscription offering a private community, weekly events, high-quality content and other perks for people interested in L&D. We just joined as well, hope to see you there.
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4 of 4 / The Cynefin Co: Estuarine mapping first edition - “is based on three key aspects of working with complex systems:
Initiating and monitoring micro-nudges, lots of small projects rather than one big project so that success and failure are both (non-ironically) opportunities
Understanding where we are, and starting journeys with a sense of direction rather than abstract goals
Understanding, and working with propensities and dispositions, managing both so that the things you desire have a lower energy cost than the things you don’t”
Main
How 8 Organizational Metaphors Impact Leadership
Nice explainer by the NOBL Academy team, building on Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization book.
Metaphors seize our attention, connect us with others, and simplify complex ideas. But they also trap us into a simplified way of thinking. At work, this means that the way we simplify our organizations determines how we can lead and embrace change.
The 8 Organizational Metaphors:
Machine: an organization is a series of connected parts arranged in a logical order in order to produce a repeatable output
Organism: an organization is a collective response to its environment and, to survive, must adapt as the environment changes
Brain: an organization is a set of functions designed to process information and learn over time
Cultural System: an organization is a mini-society, with its own culture and subcultures defined by their values, norms, beliefs, and rituals
Political System: an organization is a game of gaining, influencing, and coordinating power
Psychic Prison: an organization is a collection of myths and stories that restrict people’s thoughts, ideas, and actions
Instrument of Domination: an organization is a means to impose one’s will on others and exploit resources for personal gains
Flux and Transformation: an organization is an ever-changing system indivisible from its environment
The explainer offers, for each of the metaphors, insights about when the metaphor works, when the metaphor fails, what the metaphor means for leadership and what the metaphor says about organizational change.
Well worth the 10 min read. Enjoy!
Dessert
1 of 2 / Medievalists.net: Time and the Middle Ages - Invitation to reflect about how the tools of yesterday, the hourglasses, sundials, candles, water clocks and mechanical clocks, become metaphors and emojis today.
2 of 2 / Game Developer: Design behind “Easy to Learn, Hard to Master” games - The analogies with Strategy & Organization work are not trivial. “(…) an easy to learn game has a thoughtful amount of logical rules to remember, rules are introduced progressively throughout the game and can be learned smoothly by providing good interface and feedback.”
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Bon appétit!
Curated by knowledge chefs Raluca and Bülent Duagi.
As the Sense & Change team, we’re working with Directors in 🇷🇴 Tech companies to make more impact with the limited resources they have at hand, by:
🧭 having a clear strategy that enables better and faster decision making;
🤝 organizing better to both run operations and implement strategy with the available bandwidth and budgets;
🚀 implementing strategic initiatives and programs in an efficient and effective manner, paying attention to the people side of change;
⚡️ intentionally developing proper internal capabilities that are sustainable in the long run.
We've been recently advising, mentoring and training leaders from:
· Adobe, DB Global Technology, Deloitte Digital, HP, IT Smart Systems, Orange, Orange Services, OTP Bank, Servier, Stockday and TotalSoft.