Systems leadership

Thanks Mark McGrath for producing this wonderful video with your son! That's why we named our book on adaptive organizations, "Flock, Not Clock"—because contrary to hundreds of years of conventional wisdom that guides us to build a clockwork organization that works like a machine, organizations are organic, adaptive superorganisms by nature...much more like a flock than a clock.

Designing an Effective Vision Can Be Challenging. By far, the most challenging aspect of Vision design is that they are ideally binary.  Where VMCL is concerned, there are five "checks" for Vision that help you to determine whether or not you've designed an effective Vision. They are:

This blog was written by Patrick Kastner as a project for PADM 5449 at Cornell University. 

This blog was written by Ashley Hock as a project for PADM 5449 at Cornell University. 

When I was a child, my mother would tell me a story of her own childhood. She spoke of how the children would collect tin foil wrappers from gum and cigarette packs and make a foil ball that could be turned in to help the war effort. This was all part of a scrap drive that children and citizens participated in willingly that included gathering grease fat containing glycerine that was used for bombs and metals of all kinds used in bombers (made by an increasingly female workforce that “manned” the factories where B-52 bombers were being made). Everyone pitched in because “our boys” were “over there” fighting.

This post is adapted from Chapter 4 of Flock Not Clock. 

This post is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Flock Not Clock. Many companies do in fact articulate a vision, though it often masquerades under different names like purpose or objective, and most frequently as mission.

This post is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Flock Not Clock.

This post is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Flock Not Clock.

July 20th, 2020 Dr. Laura Cabrera spoke today on the simple rules of systems leadership in partnership with Systemic Excellence Global. 

This post is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Flock Not Clock. Given that so many companies lack a vision statement and those that exist exhibit a bizarre range of forms and purposes, you may wonder why you need one. 

This post is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Flock Not Clock. 

"Leapfrog Leaders" written by Drs. Derek Cabrera, Laura Cabrera and Hise Gibson applies existing knowledge about the elements of systems thinking to a widely used decision making framework called SOT. SOT stands for Strategic, Operational, and Tactical - which are are thought to be the three levels of problem solving. More specifically, this paper offers readers insight into the skills needed at each level of decision making; as well as how to develop them through an understanding and application of the basics of systems thinking and leadership.

Citation: “Dr. Derek Cabrera on Life After COVID-19.” Talk by Derek Cabrera, Global Policy Insights, 29 May 2020, www.youtube.com/watchv=8xvahKPcuTI  The transcript for the talk is below. 

This post is an excerpt from Flock Not Clock: Chapter 1.  Flawed Mental Model 4: Utilize Fourth (in the traditional model), flow charts, org charts, and plans only work when we have enough human power, so we’re going to need some human resources. 

This post is an excerpt from Flock Not Clock: Chapter 1.   Flawed Mental Model 3: Control Next (in the traditional model), we need a control structure. We need processes because we need to make sure that we understand every single step of a process that has not happened yet and that will constantly be changing.

This post is an excerpt from Flock Not Clock: Chapter 1.  Flawed Mental Model 2: Command Second, we need a command structure. 

This post is an excerpt from Flock Not Clock: Chapter 1.     Our more complex problems come about when how we think our organization works is out of alignment with how it actually works.

The Last Lecture Each semester, Dr. Derek Cabrera does a “last lecture” to close out the year for his students. This  year, due to Coronavirus, his lecture was virtual, however the silver lining of this is that we got it on tape.