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“rutenso” – the art of working with complex systems

By Mark McKergow It’s tempting to think of complex systems as being like simple systems, only more complicated. This is a mistake, of course – complicated systems have many elements but are nonetheless comprehensible in everyday terms.  A 747 airliner is hugely complicated, but is designed and engineered to do certain things in certain ways, […]

Board Women

By Greg Fisher Two weeks ago I attended an All Party Parliamentary Group in Westminster which focused on rebalancing boards of directors to ensure they included more women.  A compelling argument for doing this was presented by Nadhim Zahawi MP, who noted that returns on investments in companies with gender-diverse boards stood at around 11%, […]

Power versus Authority

By Greg Fisher I have recently been involved in conversations about the difference between power and formal authority in organisations.  It is an important distinction which I’d like to explore in this article. The parts of the management science literature that refer to and borrow from Complexity theory tend to define formal authority in line […]

Accountability in an Uncertain World

By Greg Fisher What does accountability look like in a world that is uncertain and in which innovation is not only prevalent but also essential?  In this blog I would like to argue that how we currently “do” accountability stifles innovation.  This is an important issue given how rapidly the world is now changing with […]