Vmcl

    See the blogs below that have this tag.

    Learning

    A Systems Thinking Approach to Innovation and Digital Transformation Adoption

    Technological innovations and digital transformation initiatives are difficult to adopt. Some of the leading hurdles are culture, archaic IT systems, lack of skills, and lack of a clear leadership vision. During my last years in the Army, I had the opportunity to develop various strategic visions and organizational mission statements that were focused on delivering disruptive technologies and digitally transforming enterprises. Now that I am transitioning from the Army, I had time to reflect on the outcomes of these visions and learned some lessons along the way. The purpose of this article is to share these lessons and describe how I used systems thinking as a foundation to my leadership style, the culture I fostered, and the management of my efforts to achieve strategic outcomes. First, I will introduce systems thinking, then provide references to the various mission and vision documents I created and conclude with the lessons I learned. 

    • Dr. Alex MacCalman
      Dr. Alex MacCalman
    Culture

    The Most Important System in the Modern Company: An Internal Marketing System

    Why we start organizations is intimately tied to why we choose to work together in the first place. If your goal is to create a garden in your back yard, you don't start an organization--because that's something you can do on your own. We start organizations because what we want to get done, requires others. That might seem like a simple concept, but it is where organizational effectiveness is lost or won.

    • Derek Cabrera, PhD
      Derek Cabrera, PhD
    Systems Leadership

    In Your Organization, Build a Flock Not a Clock.

    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.

    • Derek Cabrera, PhD
      Derek Cabrera, PhD
    VMCL

    The Power of Wow

    Excerpt from the book, Flock Not Clock. The Power of Sharing Mental Models: Wow Stories "I am empowered to create unique, memorable and personal experiences for our guests." This simple employee statement (number 3 on the Ritz-Carlton’s list of 12 service values)[14] exemplifies a culture in which employees are empowered to learn. Ritz-Carlton, one of the world’s most recognized luxury hotel chains, with 90 hotels and resorts around the world, uses organizational learning to drive its award-winning customer service. They do so by building capacity through institutionalized processes they call Daily Line-Ups and Wow Stories that use the power of storytelling as a way to spread learning across the organization.

    • Derek & Laura Cabrera
      Derek & Laura Cabrera
    Culture

    Core Tenets of Organizational Culture

    This post is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Flock Not Clock. Members of your organization will share a large number of mental models, all of varying importance and centrality to the organization and its success. So what are the most important mental models—the pillars of your culture? Where do you focus first and foremost? Organizational success depends on sharing the right mental models, ones that are complexity-friendly and promote learning and adaptation.

    • Derek & Laura Cabrera
      Derek & Laura Cabrera
    Learning

    Learn by Example

    One of the specific and practical things you can do to build a culture of mental models is to get the entire leadership team to assume another as leaders of learning. The CEO must also serve as a Chief Learning Officer (CLO). This dual role is required not just of CEOs but of any leader across the organization. If managers make learning a priority, others will see it as a priority, too. Effective leaders are skilled “lead learners” adroit at inculcating culture (facilitating shared understanding of key mental models).

    • Derek & Laura Cabrera
      Derek & Laura Cabrera
    Systems Engineering

    Leapfrog Leaders

    "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.

    • Staff
      Staff
    Jigs

    Jig: System Of Relationships

    In our jig series, we have explored many jigs such as a Barbell Jig, which combines the patterns R, D and S to create new molecular structures. In this post, we explore the "System of Relationships" jig or "S-of-R". A system of relationships is a part-whole system where the parts are relationships. Usually, (although not always) the relationships act together in some way to make up a meaningful system (as opposed to just being parts of a system of relationships without any dynamical properties or similarities). In other words, it is a jig where a set of relationships work together to form a system. 

    • Elena Cabrera
      Elena Cabrera
    Network

    All Organizations Are Complex Adaptive Systems

    You don’t get to choose whether your organization is a complex adaptive system. All organizations are complex adaptive systems because they are made up of individuals (agents) adapting to their environment. The behavior of an organization—an emergent property of the many agents and their interactions with one another and their environment—is not easily predicted by the behavior of the organizational members alone. As a leader, your challenge is to embrace this reality and leverage it to your advantage.

    • Derek & Laura Cabrera
      Derek & Laura Cabrera