Organisations must decide where and how they exercise control. On the one hand they need, on a personal level, a limitation to the disappointment rate, which a trusting approach always carries with it. Systems entirely without control generally create excessive disappointments and then fall into the opposite (which does not make things better). On the …
Trusting are all those decisions which strengthen an organisation in their competence to handle complexity. In this context complexity means three things: The readiness to tolerate ambiguity and multiple meanings. Therefore, there is always more than one correct solutions, which can’t then be worked upon with unambiguousness (=regulation). One needs trust, as one cannot resolve …
Each working step and every item of work within an organisation must deal with the question (or adopt it implicitly as already decided): “is this thorough, lasting, suitable, reliable enough?”. The answer to this question can be focused factually and socially: thorough in respect of the product/process/service (“Has it been tidily varnished?”) and thorough in …
Currently speed rules. There are many new management and organisational concepts which focus on speed: scrum, agile project management, design thinking, lean management etc. However, speed threatens to become the new norm and thus the guiding distinction of quality focus is unilaterally threatened in favour of an alternative. Each working step and every item of …
When looking for an example of an internally orientated organisation, at best one imagines a hospital in olden days: Definite iron-clad visiting hours, little information for the patients, clear shift schedules with washing and feeding of patients from five am, single meal choices, all power rests with the doctor and his decision as to what …
Customer centricity – one is almost ashamed to use one of these buzz words utilised within organisations during the last couple of decades. And yet – administrative authorities mutate to customer centres, the time has passed where German Telecom, after many weeks of delay, installs a single grey telephone after the applicant has handed in …
Everywhere and whenever an organisational process is decoupled (“You can do this and will only concern yourself with this!”), complexity is reduced, but at the same time complexity is created for the whole organisation. It is important to understand from the beginning that the guiding process networking is also paradoxical. Example: An organisation reacts to …
The best-known forms of linking in organisations are organisational charts. They regulate who talks to whom in which way (directing or reporting), or who does what. There are countless more processes of linking. These have an innate tendency to grow (commonly called bureaucratic structures). Organisations are prone to further, new and extensive branching of connections …
The sub-systems of organisations predominantly experience themselves as risk-bearing. The reason for this is that many people, teams, departments, areas, locations, regions, network partners etc., are dangerously affected by most decisions, but usually only very few make any risk-bearing decisions. Examples? When choosing the pope all cardinals decide, but all Catholics must live with the …
To shape the future one needs decisions about what future one is expecting or desiring and how one wishes to react to this expected or desired future. Organisations must therefore make plans and arrangements so that, with the help of the (always) scarce resources, those products or services can be produced which will make them …