complexity

We are proud to announce the arrangements for hosting back-to-back Cognitive Edge Accreditation courses in 2012. After the sold-out inaugural Cape Town course in 2011, in partnership with the University of Stellenbosch Business School, we will be back in Bellville from 28th to 30th March 2012. Thereafter we will be in Johannesburg from 2nd to 4th April 2012.

Steve Bealing, CEO of Cognitive Edge, will again be joining us from Singapore to facilitate the accreditation. Spaces are limited to 24 only, so be sure to book your seat soon.

The accreditation is offered over three days, in two installments. Day 1 and 2 focus on the theory of complexity and practical tools and methods that can be used in making sense of conditions of uncertainty. The third day is the optional SenseMaker^TM training that will equip people in running their own mass narrative capture and sensemaking projects. 

The course brochures are available for download: 

• Cape Town: Day 1 and 2, Day 3
• Johannesburg: Day 1 and 2, Day 3

I'm busy reading The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely (and really enjoying it).  In one of the chapters he reflects on work and meaning.  Can human beings find satisfaction and be engaged in work that pays well, but offers no meaning?

He unpacks two "types" of meaning:

"m"eaning - a feeling of being challenged by whatever our work is, and completing it to our own satisfaction vs

"M"eaning - a hope that someone else, potentially a significant someone, will find value in what we've done.  Maybe a hope that sometime, the wider world out there would benefit in some way from what we've done.

As Jamie entrenched himself in the community of Huntington, it became clear how big and complex the task ahead of him really was.  The divide between the knowledge he wanted to impart to the community, and the level they were at at that time, were miles apart.  How do you educate a community about healthy eating habits if first graders couldn't identify a tomato (they insisted it was a potato) and many others (adults and children) did not know how to use a knife and fork after years of eating junk food that only require their hands. One of the key target audiences for Jamie's message, the schools, didn't even supply knives and forks in their cafeterias as the food on their menus didn't require them.  So simply changing the menu wouldn't work.

I came across this great little video by our friends at Anecdote in Australia. I think Mark does a great job at explaining complexity and why it's important to business leaders today.

Navigating the traffic here in SA can be quite a complex affair (as I'm sure is true in most other countries).  Traffic authorities make extensive use of traffic lights and other control mechanisms to regulate traffic, especially in urban areas.  I came across this interesing video the other day, about how allowing for self-regulation on busy roads often leads to less congestion and paradoxically, less road accidents.  I'm not sure if this will work in South Africa, but it certainly is an interesting idea ...

We often laugh at the perceptions people have of Africa and her people, like the one that we still have wild animals roaming the streets of Johannesburg.  Hopefully the thousands of visitors that came to South Africa for the 2010 Soccer World Cup will dispell that myth once and for all.  Another persistant (and more worrying) perception seems to be that African culture and intelligence is inferior to those of Western nations.  Most people still think that the various Europian colonists did Africans a favor by introducing Western culture and religion - so-called "civilisation".

In most organisations we engage with, the first thing that is considered whenever a behaviour change is required is an incentive scheme.  If we need better customer experience ratings, let's incentivise the front-line staff; if we need people to share knowledge, let's link that behaviour to their KPA's; and so on, and so on.

The guys at Cognitive Edge seem to be on a roll with all the video's they're creating!  The latest one to be released is of Dave Snowden retelling one of the very first (and best) analogies I heard him use to explain the difference between ordered and unordered approaches.

Enjoy!

I am not a good project manager.  There, I said it!  Even 5 years in IBM could not drill the organised thought processes required to manage a big project into me.  I'm just not wired for that.  That being said however, I don't believe that all projects (I won't go so far to say no projects) lend themselves to being managed with structured, deterministic so-called "Waterfall" methodologies that are so popular in most IT companies.  Agile methodologies like SCRUM are much better at catering for the inherent complexities one encounters in a project environment.

In a recent blog entry, Matthew E. May writes about the "7 laws of project management and how to break them", it really is worth a read.  Among other things he writes:

Sonja and I are in Cape Town tomorrow for the Unashamedly Ethical conference on Friday and Saturday. Since the release of the King 3 report on corporate governance earlier this month, there is increased pressure for Board's and Directors to report on and manage the ethical performace of their companies.

Managing ethics?

The reality is that the realm of ethics is a profoundly complex problem, a problem that escapes direct management ... added to this complexity is the problem of human nature i.e. an unethical person is unlikely to admit to being unethical if asked. For organisations to effectively manage and report on ethics performance, a different approach is required – an approach that understands the complex nature of human behaviour, beliefs and values. To this end, we are exploring an offering that adoptis a complexity-based narrative methodology: