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Xavier Warzee, profile picture
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Be very efficient and innovative thanks to disorder!

The document discusses the evolution of organizations and their operational modes, highlighting transitions through struggle, servant leadership, and utility stages toward a crisis and potential collapse. It also addresses the importance of resilience and antifragility in adaptive systems, emphasizing that organizations can thrive by embracing stress and maintaining redundancies. The document draws on various examples and theories, including the adaptive cycle and insights from notable thinkers like Seth Godin and Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Leadership & Management◦
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BE VERY EFFICIENT AND INNOVATIVE THANKS TO DISORDER! Xavier Warzee - Scrum Conseil 31 October 2014 - Agile Tour Brussels
Xavier Warzee • Web : http://www.scrumconseil.fr • Twitter : @xwarzee • LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/xwarzee • Email : xwarzee@scrumconseil.fr
HOW ORGANIZATIONS EVOLVE? According to Seth Godin
Struggle At the beginning, no one knows what you make or why they need it. … But the struggle is always there. …
Servant As a soon-to-be- successful organization gains traction, it has a choice. It can move to servant mode, delighting and connecting customers, exceeding expectations and performing what seems like miracles. …
Bully As the organization gains power (and constituents) it is under pressure to increase profits and market share and lock in. … “We make the rules now.”
Utility No organization stays in bully mode forever. The step after this is utility, the organization that serves a function, makes a profit, and is often taken for granted.
What after Utility? Go Nowhere Go Somewhere
Nowhere / Somewhere
Solution for organization to survive?
“Organizations as Ecosystems: Probing the Value of a Metaphor” by Matthew Mars, Judith Bronstein, Robert Lusch Havard Business Review
HOW ECOSYSTEMS EVOLVE? According to Lance H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling
Much Little
Cf. Resilience Alliance http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/adaptive_cycle
Value maximization in the adaptive cycle
Value renewal in the adaptive cycle
Seth’s Path Adaptive Cycle Practices Organizational culture Struggle – no one knows what you make or why they need it Collapse or release (Ω) – the established order breaks down and uncertainty increases Lean Startup Learning Servant – delighting and connecting customers, exceeding expectations and performing what seems like miracles Reorganization (α) – new players and alternatives emerge Agile Collaboration / Empowerment Bully – under pressure to increase profits and market share and lock in Growth or exploitation (r) – a period of growth and competition among entrepreneurs and survivors previous cycles Expertizes Competence Utility – serves a function, makes a profit, and is often taken for granted Conservation (K) – the winners consolidate and then maintain the existing order Process Command & Control
A “crisis” always happens even for leading organizations
A FIRST TRY TO AVOID CRISIS Systems/Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems
Systems/Organizations needs Efficiency •to be managed to limit resource usage i.e. they need to be efficient Productivity •to be managed to optimize time to develop itself Robustness •maintain critical functionality in the face of significant stress Innovation •ability to generate disruptive, qualitative and fundamental improvements which enables it to undergo transformational change
Robustness Ability to Innovate Resilience
Resilience Stability Efficiency Productivity Robustness Ability to Innovate
HOW TO MITIGATE BETWEEN RESILIENCE AND STABILITY?
The essence of control is the elimination of disorder Efficiency and stability are both fundamental to control
To the extent that the control process and the model that guides this process are accurate and reliable, control itself delivers stability.
To the extent that the model is inaccurate i.e. to the extent that the map does not match the territory, the system needs to maintain some slack and redundancy to buffer against environmental changes that are not anticipated by the model.
FROM STABILITY TO FRAGILITY
Extended periods of stability and, by extension, policies that focus on stabilization frequently end in collapse.
Examples of this phenomenon • forests transformed across the country into a veritable tinderbox prone to increasingly catastrophic fires. Suppression of forest fires in the United States • But an increasing frequency of catastrophic floods. Levees and embankments on many of the world’s rivers may have succeeding in controlling their path in normal years • the prelude to the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression. The economic ‘Great Moderation’ that the developed economies enjoyed since the 80s turned
Attempt to control CAS > Simplification of German Forest Illegible, complex Legible, simplified
Control Simplification / Legibility
Eventual Illegibility of Control Process • Fragile • Deteriorating Productivity • Illegible, Complex Domain due to complexity of control process and past interventions Late Control • Fragile • High Productivity • Legible, Simplified Domaine Initial Control • Resilient • Low/Moderate Productivity • Illegible, Complex Domain Pre-Control
FROM FRAGILE TO ANTIFRAGILE
The leaping frog Porcelain Brass Real
The leaping frog after earthquake Fragile Robust Antifragile
Muscles are Adaptive The Body is Antifragile
Learning is Adaptive
“The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization's ability to learn faster than the competition.” Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
IT Systems Perfection
Enlightenment Bias Sub-parts of a complex system are simpler A stable system is made from very hard & durable sub-parts
“Stability is a Time Bomb” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
Adaptive Systems crave Exercise
Forests are Adaptive
Monocultures are Fragile
“Nature loves small error, humans don’t — hence when you rely on human judgment you are at the mercy of a mental bias that disfavors antifragility.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
Enforcing a single best practice on the organization, can make it … fragile
Fragile • Fragile things are typically large • Responses to variability and stress come from the outside • Fragile things are overly optimized • Fragile people and systems seek to eliminate variability, noise, and tension
Fragile Things that are fragile break or suffer from chaos and randomness. Fragile systems/people/things seek out tranquility because they have more to lose than to gain during volatile times.
Antifragile • Less is usually more with antifragility • Responses to variability and stress are built into the antifragile • Antifragile things have built-in redundancies • Nature and tradition do a good job of creating antifragility
Antifragile Things that are antifragile grow and strengthen from volatility and stress (to a point). When people or systems are antifragile, there’s more upside than downside when Black Swan events occur. Antifragile systems feed on chaos and uncertainty like a primordial god.
How to become antifragile ? • Intentionally inject stress in your life • Add redundancies in your life • Employ the “barbell strategy” • 90% of your wealth in robust investments that are rock-solid, • and the last 10% spread around a number of highly speculative investments that have big upsides – be part of the “black Swan” • Never take advice from someone who doesn’t have “skin in the game.” • Practice via negativa • Keep your options open
ANTIFRAGILITY @ GOOGLE
PROJECT “CURIOSITY” @ TOYOTA
Toyota - Entering the US market NUMMI and the Adaptive Cycle
Toyota - Entering the luxury
Toyota - Against the trend with Hybrids
References • Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Press, 2005. • Gunderson, Lance H. and C.S. Holling, Eds. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington: Island Press, 2002. • Resilience Alliance and Santa Fe Institute. 2004. Thresholds and alternate states in ecological and social- ecological systems. Resilience Alliance. (Online.) URL: http://www.resalliance.org/index.php?id=183
References Web • Count to 4… and repeat! • http://atfortytwo.com/2014/10/23/count-to-4-and-repeat/ • Resilience: Adaptation on the Rebound • http://nmnh.typepad.com/rogers_archaeology_lab/2012/12/resilience.h tml • Panarchy: Out with the Old, In with the New • http://nmnh.typepad.com/rogers_archaeology_lab/2013/02/panarchy.ht ml • Creative Destruction: Think like a Forest! • http://thenatureofbusiness.org/2013/02/06/creative-destruction-think- like-a-forest/