infoarch

Last week I blogged about 'Reaching out' . I tried to explain why I think it's so important, especially in organizations. This led to another thought. It's something that I came to see during my previous life as a consultant, but actually already knew while working in a large company. It's about 'shipping'. To me shipping is about delivery results. The weird thing is that I find most people think about results as being a huge results. So many don't deliver results at all. They think and talk endlessly about what the result will be. But never really produce results or versions of the result. And this thinking and talking usually happens in small groups. To others it seems that nothing is happening. As a consultant I was hired to deliver results. I remember the great clients I've worked for that were absolutely thrilled results would be delivered, every 1 to 2 weeks. Progress! Some of them were capable of doing so by themselves but didn't ha...

What is social business? What does it look like? Dave Gray shares his view in napkin sketches. Life expectancy of a S&P 500 company is getting shorter. It's 15 years now. Companies are complex systems (shown by complex hierarchies). There are companies that make sense of other companies because they are so complex. Think Microsoft and government. For every extra employee your profit goes down. For every 3 employees your profit per employee goes down. It is increasing, but by less and less. Or: diminishing returns. However productivity goes up in cities when population grows. Why? We think about companies as machines (stable, little relation to environment), but should start to think about them as organisms. That adapt to the environment. Companies are made out of people. But they don't live long and can be less productive the larger they get. Dave refers to Arie de Geus' book The Living Company. His findings are long-living companies are: decentralized. Porous boudarie...