Leadership

The Assumptions That Never Change

April 10, 2026

Agile, Agility at Scale, AI, Article, Change management, Digital evolution, Leadership, Management, Organisational Therapy

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The Assumptions That Never Change

Agile failed. Now AI is failing. And the reason, in both cases, is the same one that killed Lean manufacturing in Detroit, buried ERP implementations, and let newspapers watch the internet destroy them. Management refuses to update its beliefs.

There is a graveyard of methodologies and technologies that should have transformed organisations but didn’t. Their tombstones share an epitaph: adopted in form, rejected in spirit.

The latest two headstones are being carved right now. Agile — the software development philosophy that promised adaptive, collaborative, human-centred work — became, in most organisations, a peculiar regime of standups, story points, and Jira tickets that somehow produced more bureaucracy than the waterfall processes it replaced. And AI — the most powerful productivity technology in a generation — is being procured, announced, and quietly abandoned at a rate that might alarm anyone paying attention.

Both failures have a familiar shape. The tools were bought. The consultants were hired. The frameworks were installed. And then nothing fundamentally changed, because the people at the top never changed the one thing that needed to change: what they believed.

‘The organisation imports the visible artefacts of the new approach whilst management protects the invisible assumptions the new approach directly threatens.’

The Agile Illusion

Agile was not primarily a project management approach. It was a philosophical claim: that software is best built by small, trusted, self-organising teams who can respond to change, and that the job of management is to protect those teams from bureaucracy and give them the conditions to think clearly. The Agile Manifesto (Beck et al., 2001) said this plainly. Almost nobody who adopted Agile read it that way.

What most organisations actually did was translate Agile into a management reporting framework. Two-week sprints became two-week checkpoints. The product backlog became a demand queue. The Scrum Master became a junior project manager with a new job title. The daily standup became the most tedious meeting in the building. Velocity — a team’s internal sense of its own pace — became a metric executives tracked on dashboards and used in individuals’ performance reviews.

The core assumption that Agile required management to update was this: that developers are knowledge workers whose judgement should be trusted, not inputs to be measured and directed. Most organisations never accepted that. They kept the ceremonies and discarded the philosophy. The result was monstrosities like SAFe — Scaled Agile Framework — a methodology so baroque that it required its own certifications and effectively recreated the waterfall programme management it was supposed to replace. Consultants got rich. Software quality did not improve.

The AI Performance

The AI adoption story is following the same script with remarkable fidelity, just faster.

Organisations have purchased enterprise licences for AI tools. They have appointed Chief AI Officers. They have run lunch-and-learns and internal hackathons. They have issued press releases about their AI transformation. And in a very large number of cases, the actual use of AI has remained confined to a small number of enthusiastic individuals who figured it out themselves, whilst the broader organisation waits for governance frameworks, approved use-case lists, and legal clearance that never quite arrives.

The reason is the same as with Agile. AI, properly used, requires management to accept that workers can think alongside a tool that has more information than their managers, can iterate faster than any approval process allows, and can make decisions without running them up the hierarchy. It requires accepting that value comes from experimentation and judgement, not compliance and predictability. Most management structures are not built on those assumptions and have no intention of becoming so.

So instead, AI gets adopted in the one place where it doesn’t threaten anyone: the slide deck. It gets added to PowerPoint. It generates first drafts that a committee then rewrites into the same language that would have been produced without it. It summarises documents that perhaps should not have been written. The technology performs transformation. The organisation performs having adopted it.

This Is Not New

The phenomenon has a long and well-documented history. Every generation produces a new methodology or technology powerful enough to require genuine belief change, and every generation of management finds a way to adopt its appearance without its substance.

1970s–80s — Lean Manufacturing Toyota’s system was copied everywhere. It worked nowhere outside Japan. Western executives took the kanban boards and missed the point: that frontline workers are the primary source of process intelligence. Womack, Jones, and Roos (1990) documented this transfer failure extensively, noting that the physical tools of the Toyota Production System were faithfully replicated whilst the underlying philosophy of worker trust and continuous improvement was quietly set aside. That belief was non-negotiable for Toyota. So was rejecting it for its imitators.

1980s–90s — Total Quality Management Deming’s (1986) 14 Points required management to eliminate fear, destroy internal competition, and abandon numerical targets. American firms kept all three and launched quality departments. Deming called this ‘the same old stuff’. He was right.

1990s–2000s — ERP Implementation Failure rates for SAP and Oracle deployments routinely exceeded 50 per cent. Davenport (1998) identified the root cause clearly: executives assumed the software would conform to existing processes, when in fact the software encoded better ones. Adapting to it meant admitting that current practice was suboptimal. Nobody wanted to hear it.

1990s–2000s — Newspapers and the Internet Most major papers had the brand, the audience, and the early web presence to dominate digital news. They failed because they believed they were in the newspaper business. Christensen’s (1997) framework for disruptive innovation anticipated this precisely: incumbents fail not because they lack capability, but because their assumptions about what business they are in prevent them from deploying it. The assumption protected print revenue until there was no print revenue left.

2010s — Digital Transformation Enterprises hired CDOs, opened innovation labs, and ran hackathons — whilst leaving intact the annual budgeting cycles, legal approval chains, and risk aversion that made them slow. The labs produced pilots. The pilots died. Kotter (1996) argued that transformation fails when the urgency is performed rather than felt; the innovation lab is perhaps the clearest institutional expression of performed urgency ever devised.

Ongoing — Evidence-Based Medicine Research consistently shows a gap of 17 years or more between robust clinical evidence and standard practice (Morris, Wooding, & Grant, 2011). The mechanism is not ignorance. It is that updating protocols implicitly admits prior practice was suboptimal — threatening status, identity, and liability. The assumption ‘we are already practising good medicine’ actively blocks the adoption of better medicine.

The Cargo Cult Pattern

Anthropologists coined the term ‘cargo cult’ to describe communities in the Pacific who, after contact with American military logistics in the Second World War, built wooden airstrips and control towers in hopes of summoning supply planes. The practice replicated the visible form of something that worked whilst missing the underlying system entirely.

Every failed methodology adoption is a management cargo cult. The organisation builds the airstrip. It holds the ceremonies. It names people after the roles. It waits for the planes. The planes don’t come, because the planes were never the point.

What makes Agile and AI particularly prone to this failure is that both, at their core, ask management to do the one thing most managers have built careers specifically to avoid: cede control. Agile asks managers to trust teams to self-organise and make product decisions. AI asks managers to accept that value creation will be distributed, emergent, and not amenable to the standard instruments of oversight and measurement. Both require a fundamental belief change about where intelligence in an organisation lives.

‘The ceremony is adopted. The belief is not. And so the cargo cult performs its rituals and wonders why the planes never land.’

What Would Genuine Adoption Look Like?

It would look uncomfortable. It would involve managers giving teams real authority over their tools and methods. It would involve abandoning approval processes that exist to protect hierarchy rather than reduce risk. It would involve accepting that the relevant unit of measurement is not activity or compliance, but needs met— and that outcomes in complex environments are not predictable in advance.

It would also involve a specific kind of intellectual honesty that organisations rarely reward: the willingness of management to say, publicly, the way we have been operating was based on assumptions that are no longer correct. That is the sentence that never gets said. It is also the sentence that everything depends on.

The Diagnosis

The failure mode is not technical. It is not a lack of training, budget, or talent. It is a specific act of organisational self-protection: the decision, usually unspoken and often unconscious, to preserve the beliefs that justify existing power structures against the pressure of a new methodology that would redistribute that power.

The technology changes every decade. The pattern does not. Until organisations find a way to make belief and assumption changes survivable for the people at the top — or until those people are replaced by others who already hold different beliefs — the graveyard will keep filling. See also: #NoManagement

The Church of Leadership: Why Companies Worship at an Altar Built on Faith, Not Evidence

February 28, 2026

Article, Leadership, NoLeadership, Philosophy

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The Church of Leadership: Why Companies Worship at an Altar Built on Faith, Not Evidence

‘What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.’

~ Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great (2007)

We spend roughly $366 billion a year globally on leadership development. We send executives on retreats. We hire coaches. We buy books — endless, endless books — each promising the secret formula that will transform a mediocre manager into a visionary. And after all of it, we take it on faith that it works.

Because the evidence? It is not really there.

Leadership, I would argue, has become the secular religion of the professional world — complete with its own prophets, sacred texts, rituals, and an unshakeable conviction amongst believers that defies the absence of proof.

The Prophets and Their Gospels

Every religion needs its figures of revelation, and the leadership industry has no shortage. There is the Gospel According to Jim Collins, where Level 5 leaders are humble yet fierce. The Book of Brené, in which vulnerability is the path to salvation. The Epistles of Simon Sinek, reminding us to always, always start with why.

Each prophet offers a framework. Each framework promises transformation. And each contradicts the last just enough that followers must choose their denomination. Are you a servant leader or a transformational one? Do you lead from the front or from behind? Is your job to set the vision or to get out of the way?

The answers depend entirely on which book you last read.

The Unfalsifiable Doctrine

Here is the hallmark of a belief system rather than a science: it cannot be proven wrong.

When a company succeeds, we credit its leadership. When it fails, we blame a lack of leadership — or the wrong kind. The logic is perfectly circular. Good outcomes prove the leader was effective. Bad outcomes prove better leadership was needed. There is no result that could ever cause a true believer to say, ‘Maybe leadership does not matter as much as we think.’

This is the structure of faith, not empiricism. A scientific claim must be falsifiable. It must be possible, at least in theory, to demonstrate it is wrong. But the leadership narrative has insulated itself from failure. It simply absorbs contradictions and carries on. As Meindl et al. (1985) demonstrated in their seminal research on the ‘romance of leadership’, we have a deep-seated tendency to attribute organisational outcomes to leaders whilst ignoring other influencing factors — a cognitive bias that functions remarkably like an article of faith.

The $366 Billion Offering Plate

Consider what we are actually paying for. McKinsey has found that only 7 per cent of CEOs believe their organisations are building effective global leaders, and just 10 per cent said their leadership development initiatives have a clear business impact. In a separate survey, only 11 per cent of more than 500 executives strongly agreed that their leadership development interventions achieved and sustained the desired results (Feser et al., 2017). Meanwhile, Lacerenza et al. (2017) found in their meta-analysis of 335 studies that whilst leadership training can produce moderate positive effects, these effects vary considerably depending on design, delivery, and implementation — and that only a small minority of organisations believe their programmes are effective.

And yet: the industry grows. Budgets increase. New programmes launch. If a pharmaceutical company spent this much on a drug with this little confidence from its own customers, regulators would shut it down. But leadership development is not a drug. It is a creed. And creeds do not need clinical trials.

The faithful respond to this critique the way the faithful always do. You are measuring the wrong things. The impact is long-term. You cannot quantify inspiration. These are the same defences offered for prayer, for crystals, for any practice whose adherents have decided in advance that it works.

The Rituals

Every religion has its liturgy, and the Church of Leadership is no exception.

There is the offsite retreat, where teams are removed from the context where they actually work in order to do trust falls and write values on whiteboards that no one will look at again. McKinsey’s own research notes that adults typically retain just 10 per cent of what they hear in classroom lectures, versus nearly two-thirds when they learn by doing — yet the retreat format endures (Gurdjian et al., 2014). There is the 360-degree feedback review, a confession booth where colleagues anonymously absolve or condemn you. There is the executive coaching session, a private audience with a spiritual director who asks you powerful questions at £400 an hour.

And then there is the keynote, the sermon. A charismatic figure takes the stage, tells a story about climbing a mountain or nearly dying, extracts a lesson about resilience or purpose, and the congregation applauds. Everyone feels moved. Nothing changes.

The Inconvenient Research

When researchers actually try to pin down what makes organisations succeed, leadership is rarely the dominant variable. Structural factors — market conditions, access to capital, regulatory environments, talent pipelines, sheer luck — tend to explain far more variance in outcomes than who sits in the corner office.

Phil Rosenzweig’s The Halo Effect dismantled the methodology behind most popular leadership research, showing that the studies we love most are riddled with attribution errors (Rosenzweig, 2007). We see a successful company, interview its CEO, and reverse-engineer a narrative of brilliant leadership. We never account for the hundreds of leaders who did the same things and failed. Survivorship bias is not a bug in leadership research. It is a feature.

Even the most iconic case studies crumble under scrutiny. Several of Jim Collins’s ‘great’ companies in Good to Great later collapsed or dramatically underperformed — Circuit City filed for bankruptcy, Fannie Mae required a government bailout, and Wells Fargo became embroiled in a major fraud scandal. As the economist Steven Levitt observed, investing in the portfolio of all eleven companies from the date of publication would actually have resulted in underperformance against the S&P 500 (Collins, 2001). The visionary leaders of Peters and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence presided over subsequent disasters — Atari, Wang, and Data General all collapsed, and fifteen of the thirty-five publicly traded companies underperformed the market after publication (Peters & Waterman, 1982). The research did not predict the future because it was not really science. It was hagiography — the writing of saints’ lives.

Why We Believe Anyway

So why does the faith persist? For the same reasons all faiths do.

It gives us a sense of control. The world is complex and largely ungovernable. The idea that one person at the top can steer an organisation through chaos is deeply comforting. It is simpler than admitting that outcomes are mostly the product of systems, incentives, and chance.

It serves the powerful. If leadership is what matters most, then leaders deserve their compensation, their authority, their outsized share of credit. The doctrine of leadership is, conveniently, most fervently preached by leaders.

It offers meaning. Work is where most of us spend the majority of our waking hours. The leadership narrative gives that time a heroic quality. You are not just managing spreadsheets. You are on a journey. You are developing. You are becoming.

It creates community. Shared belief binds people together. The language of leadership — alignment, vision, purpose, authenticity — creates an in-group. To question it is to mark yourself as cynical, disengaged, not a team player. Just as in any church, the heretic pays a social cost.

What Would Evidence Actually Look Like?

If we wanted to treat leadership like a science rather than a religion, we would need to do some uncomfortable things.

We would need randomised controlled trials — assigning leaders to organisations randomly and measuring outcomes, controlling for every other variable. We would need to agree on what ‘good leadership’ actually means before we see the results, not after. We would need to track failures as carefully as successes. We would need to admit that many leadership interventions might not work at all, and that the money might be better spent on better systems, better hiring, or simply better pay for the people doing the actual work.

We do not do these things. We do not even talk about doing them. Because deep down, questioning leadership feels like questioning meaning itself. And that is not a scientific position. That is a religious one.

The Sermon Ends

I am not arguing that management does not matter, or that some people are not better than others at guiding teams through difficulty. Of course they are. But the gap between that modest, obvious claim and the sprawling, mythologised, multi-hundred-billion-pound Leadership Industrial Complex is vast — and it is filled not with evidence, but with faith.

The next time someone tells you that leadership is the most important factor in any organisation’s success, ask them how they know. Not what book they read. Not which TED Talk moved them. Ask them for the controlled study. Ask them for the data.

Watch the silence that follows.

It will be the same silence you would hear if you asked any true believer to prove their god exists. Not because they are wrong, necessarily. But because proof was never really the point.

Is Leadership the Answer?

December 16, 2025

Leadership, Quickies

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Is Leadership the Answer?

Do you assume that leadership is a positive thing? What are the consequences of that assumption?

The Software Crisis: An Opportunity for Go-Ahead Managers to Step Up and Stand Out

August 25, 2025

Actionable Insights, Article, Careers, Leadership, Management

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The Software Crisis: An Opportunity for Go-Ahead Managers to Step Up and Stand Out

In 1968, at the NATO Software Engineering Conference, computer scientists first coined the term ‘software crisis’ to describe projects routinely exceeding budgets, missing deadlines, and delivering unreliable systems. Nearly 60 years later, the same fundamental problems persist. Projects still exceed budgets by 200-300%, timelines slip by months or years, and technical debt accumulates faster than teams can address it.

This isn’t an acute crisis—it’s a chronic condition of the software industry. And that creates an extraordinary opportunity for leaders willing to recognise what six decades of industry leaders have largely missed: the software crisis represents the ultimate leadership vacuum.

Understanding the Persistence of the Problem

The longevity of these challenges is remarkable. The issues identified at that 1968 NATO conference—cost overruns, schedule delays, maintenance difficulties, and unreliable software—read like a checklist of today’s software development problems. According to recent industry surveys, 70% of software projects still fail to meet their original scope, timeline, or budget requirements. The average enterprise maintains over £1.2 million in technical debt, whilst developer productivity has actually declined despite advances in tooling and methodologies.

This persistence reveals a profound truth: the software crisis isn’t fundamentally a technical problem—it’s an organisational problem that has resisted solution for generations. Tools, languages, and platforms have evolved dramatically since 1968, but the underlying organisational challenges remain largely unchanged.

What’s changed is the stakes. Software was once a specialised tool used by large corporations and research institutions. Today, it’s the foundation of nearly every business operation and customer interaction. The cost of poor software management has multiplied exponentially, but so has the value of getting it right.

The Hidden Opportunities in Six Decades of Failure

The persistence of software challenges creates extraordinary opportunities for leaders who can succeed where generations have struggled. After 60 years of industry-wide failure to solve these fundamental problems, the leaders who can deliver consistent results become exceptionally valuable. Here’s what’s separating the rare successes from decades of disappointment:

Market Positioning Through Reliability Whilst competitors struggle with delayed launches and buggy releases, organisations that master software delivery gain enormous market advantages. Customers increasingly value reliability over flashy features. The leader who can consistently deliver working software on time becomes invaluable to their organisation and attractive to competitors.

Talent Magnetism Through Better Processes Top developers actively seek organisations with mature development practices. By implementing modern DevOps, continuous integration, and collaborative development environments, leaders can attract and retain the best talent—creating a virtuous cycle of improvement and innovation.

Executive Visibility Through Problem-Solving C-suite executives are acutely aware of software challenges affecting their business objectives. The leader who can articulate technical problems in business terms and deliver noticeable improvements gains unprecedented access to senior leadership and strategic decision-making.

Strategic Actions for Transformation Leaders

The path from crisis to opportunity requires deliberate action across multiple dimensions. Here’s how exceptional leaders are distinguishing themselves:

Invest in Developer Experience The best managers recognise that developer productivity directly impacts business outcomes. This means advocating for better tooling, reducing bureaucratic overhead, and creating environments where engineers can focus on attending to the needs of the Folks That Matter™ rather than fighting mandated processes. When developers are purposefully productive and engaged, quality improves and timelines become predictable.

Bridge the Communication Gap Technical teams and business stakeholders often speak different languages, leading to misaligned expectations and failed projects. Exceptional managers become translators, helping engineers understand business priorities whilst ensuring executives appreciate technical constraints and trade-offs. This translation capability becomes increasingly valuable as software becomes central to every business function.

Champion Incremental Innovation Rather than pursuing dramatic overhauls that often fail, smart managers focus attention on the way the work works. Small, consistent improvements to collective assumptions and beliefs compound into significant competitive advantages.

Build Cross-Functional Collaboration The days of throwing requirements over the wall to development teams are past. The search for success invites tight collaboration between product management, design, engineering, and operations. Managers who can orchestrate these cross-functional teams create more innovative solutions and faster time-to-market.

Practical Implementation Framework

Transforming the software crisis into career opportunity invites a systematic approach. Here’s a proven framework for making immediate impact:

Start with Quick Wins Have people identify the most painful bottlenecks in the current development approach and address them first. This might mean automating manual deployments, implementing code review standards, or establishing clear definition-of-startable and definition-of-done criteria. Quick wins build credibility and momentum for larger changes.

Invest in Your Team’s Growth The best managers understand that their success depends entirely on their team’s capabilities. Invire applications for training, conferences, and certification programmes. Encourage experimentation with new tools and methodologies. Enable internal knowledge-sharing sessions where team members can learn from each othe and from other parts of the business.

Communicate Success Stories Don’t assume your achievements will be noticed automatically. Regularly communicate improvements in business terms that executives understand. ‘We reduced deployment time from 4 hours to 20 minutes’ becomes ‘We can now respond to customer feedback 12 times faster and deploy revenue-generating features the same day they’re completed.’ Oh, and manage expectations above all.

Building Long-Term Leadership Capital

The leaders who thrive aren’t just solving immediate problems—they’re accomplishing what the industry has failed to achieve for six decades. This creates extraordinary personal leadership capital and sustainable competitive advantages.

Develop Technical Credibility You don’t need to become a programmer, but you need to understand the technical landscape well enough to participate in informed decision-making and ask insightful questions. Invest time in learning about emerging technologies. Technical credibility earns respect and enables better decision-making.

Cultivate Strategic Thinking Connect software development initiatives to broader business objectives. Understand how improved deployment practices enable faster market entry, how better quality reduces customer support costs, and how modern architectures support scalability. This strategic perspective makes you a valuable contributor to high-level planning.

Build External Networks Engage with the broader software development community through conferences, user groups, and online forums. Understanding industry trends and best practices helps you anticipate challenges and opportunities before they impact your organisation. This external perspective often provides innovative solutions to internal problems.

The Competitive Advantage of Solving the Unsolvable

Organisations that successfully transcend the software crisis don’t just survive—they emerge as rare exceptions in an industry that has struggled with the same fundamental problems for 60 years. The managers who lead these transformations establish themselves as having accomplished something that has eluded generations of industry leaders.

Consider that the software crisis has outlasted entire technological revolutions. We’ve moved from mainframes to personal computers to mobile devices to cloud computing, yet the same challenges persist. This suggests that the solutions aren’t primarily technological—they’re leadership solutions that most managers have failed to implement successfully.

The career trajectories of the rare managers who have successfully led software transformations are telling. Many now hold C-suite positions at major corporations, serve on boards of technology companies, or lead successful startups. They’ve distinguished themselves by solving problems that most of their peers couldn’t address despite decades of industry attention.

The Courage to Stand Out: Confronting FOSO in Software Leadership

Before embarking on the journey to solve the software crisis, it’s crucial to acknowledge a significant psychological barrier that has contributed to its 60-year persistence: the Fear of Standing Out (FOSO). Like zebras finding safety in the anonymity of the herd, many capable managers have quasi-rational reasons for avoiding the visibility that comes with tackling transformational challenges.

Understanding FOSO isn’t about overcoming a character flaw—it’s about recognising a legitimate protective mechanism. The software development manager who notices fundamental process problems but keeps quiet has likely observed what happens to colleagues who “rock the boat.” They’ve seen eager managers volunteer for transformation initiatives, only to find themselves burdened with unrealistic expectations, working longer hours for the same compensation, and becoming targets during organisational restructuring.

In many organisations, standing out means standing in the line of fire. The manager who proposes significant changes becomes responsible for their success, often without additional resources or authority. When these initiatives face inevitable setbacks—and software transformations always encounter obstacles—the visible leader bears the blame whilst those who stayed safely in the background remain protected.

This dynamic helps explain why the software crisis has persisted across generations of managers. It’s not that capable leaders haven’t recognised the problems; it’s that many have made calculated decisions to prioritise job security and work-life balance over the risks of high-visibility transformation efforts. They understand that acclaim and its inevitable bedfellow, opprobrium, arrive as a package deal. The manager who successfully transforms software delivery will certainly receive recognition—but they’ll also face criticism from those who resent change, colleagues who question their methods, and stakeholders who focus on any shortcomings rather than overall progress.

For managers supporting families or operating in volatile industries, avoiding this double-edged sword of visibility often makes perfect sense.

However, confronting the software crisis requires accepting that meaningful change demands courage and calculated risk-taking. Machiavelli understood this challenge centuries ago when he observed:

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

This wisdom proves particularly relevant to software transformation efforts. The manager proposing modern development ideas will face resistance from those comfortable with existing ways of doing things, scepticism from colleagues who’ve seen previous initiatives fail, and tepid support even from those who might benefit from improvements. The managers who successfully lead software transformations understand they’re choosing growth over safety, opportunity over security, whilst accepting Machiavelli’s warning about the inevitable opposition that accompanies meaningful change.

Mitigating the Risks of Leadership

For managers considering stepping forward, the key isn’t eliminating risk—it’s managing it intelligently:

Build Political Capital First: Before proposing major changes, establish credibility through smaller successes. Demonstrate competence in low-risk scenarios before taking on transformation initiatives.

Secure Stakeholder Buy-In: Ensure senior leadership genuinely supports the initiative, not just in principle but with resources and protection from political fallout.

Create Shared Ownership: Frame transformation as collaborative effort rather than personal crusade. Share credit generously whilst maintaining clear accountability for results.

Document Everything: Maintain clear records of decisions, constraints, and progress. This protection becomes invaluable when initiatives face criticism or when leadership changes.

Develop Exit Strategies: Understand your market value and maintain external networks. Confidence in your ability to land elsewhere reduces the fear of organisational retaliation.

The choice to address the software crisis isn’t just about ambition—it’s about consciously deciding that the potential rewards justify the genuine risks. This decision requires honest assessment of your financial situation, career goals, and tolerance for organisational turbulence. There’s no shame in choosing security over growth, but there’s also tremendous opportunity for those willing to stand out thoughtfully and strategically.

Your Moment to Solve the Unsolved

The software crisis has persisted for 60 years, outlasting countless technological revolutions and management fads. This isn’t a temporary opportunity—it’s an evergreen challenge that the vast majority of managers have chyosen to avoid across multiple generations.

The persistence of these problems means two things: they’re genuinely difficult to solve, and the managers who do solve them become extraordinarily valuable. When an entire industry struggles with the same fundamental challenges for six decades, success becomes a rare, precious and notable career asset.

The question isn’t whether your organisation will eventually solve its software challenges—it’s whether you’ll be amongst the rare managers who accomplish what generations of industry leaders have failed to achieve, or whether you’ll join the long list of those who tried and fell short, or the even longer list of those that never even tried.

The software crisis is real, the challenges are significant, and after 60 years, the stakes are as high as they ever were. But for managers willing to step up, learn, and lead, this persistent challenge represents not just a career opportunity, but a chance to join the ranks of those who’ve solved one of the industry’s most enduring problems.

The question is: will you be the manager who finally cracks the wall of indifference that has plagued the industry for six decades?

Beyond Leadership: Dismantling Humanity’s Most Toxic Organising Principle

June 3, 2025

Actionable Insights, Advice Process, Alien tech, Article, Fellowship, History, Leadership, Thinking tools, Toxic behaviours, Violence

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Beyond Leadership: Dismantling Humanity’s Most Toxic Organising Principle

It’s been a long time since I first wrote about the problems with the whole idea of leadership. So here’s an update, using the Five Patterns of Thinking Differently.

Leadership is toxic. Not just bad leadership, authoritarian leadership, or corrupt leadership—the very concept of leadership itself is fundamentally poisonous to human flourishing and organisational effectiveness.

This isn’t a critique of individual leaders or a call for better management training. It’s a recognition that leadership, as we understand it, is the modern manifestation of humanity’s most persistent and destructive organising principle: the Domination System that has shaped civilisation for thousands of years.

The statement ‘the only effective leadership is leading the obviation of leadership’ isn’t a management paradox—it’s a revolutionary call to dismantle the hierarchical structures that have held humanity back since the rise of kings and empires.

Designing Post-Leadership Systems

What does organisation look like beyond the Domination System? It requires fundamentally different principles. Here’s a Five Patterns of Thinking Differently (T-Squad / TSGDB) take:

(T)Transform Constraints into Advantages: The apparent constraint of “no one in charge” becomes the advantage. When there’s no single decision-maker bottleneck, decisions can happen faster, closer to the context where they’re needed. Instead of all decisions flowing through a manager, establish clear decision-making frameworks like the Advice Process, where anyone can make any decision after seeking advice from those affected and those with expertise. The “constraint” of not having managerial approval actually accelerates response time and reduces single points of failure.

(S)Enable Systems-Level Perception: Shift perception from “leader controls system” to “system creates conditions for emergence.” See the organisation as a living ecosystem where leadership functions are distributed properties of the whole, not concentrated in individuals. Rather than asking “Who should lead this project?” ask “What conditions would allow this project to self-organise effectively?”

(G)Generate Unexpected Connections: Study how leaderless systems work in nature (flocks, immune systems, mycorrhizal networks), in technology (internet protocols, blockchain consensus), and in successful human organisations (open source projects, Wikipedia, traditional indigenous governance). Apply principles from ant colony optimisation—where complex collective behaviour emerges from simple individual rules—to organisational design.

(D)Develop Metacognitive Awareness: Recognise that the very concept of “leadership” as we understand it is a mental model that shapes what we see as possible. Notice when you default to asking “Who’s responsible for this?” instead of “How can we design responsibility into the system?” Catch yourself when you assume someone needs to be “in charge” rather than considering how coordination might emerge naturally.

(B)Build Comprehensive Mental Models: Integrate insights from complexity science, evolutionary biology, game theory, network effects, and human psychology to understand how coordination and direction can emerge without centralised control. Build models that include how trust networks enable coordination without hierarchy, how shared mental models reduce need for explicit coordination, how feedback mechanisms enable self-correction, and how culture acts as distributed programming for human behaviour.

Leadership as Institutionalised Violence

Modern leadership, stripped of its empty rhetoric about ‘servant leadership’ and ’empowerment’, functions as a form of institutionalised violence. Not physical violence, but economic and psychological coercion. The power to hire and fire, to promote or demote, to reward or punish—these are the modern equivalents of the king’s sword.

This system perpetuates what Wink identified as the ‘myth of redemptive violence’—the belief that violence against those who do us wrong is not only justified but morally necessary and ultimately redemptive. In organisations, this manifests in the assumption that when people fail to perform, resist directives, or challenge authority, the appropriate response is punishment, discipline, or removal. The system justifies its violence against ‘wrongdoers’ as necessary for the greater good.

But this assumption is not only wrong—it actively creates the very problems it claims to solve. The toxicity isn’t accidental; it’s structural.

The Structural Toxicity of Hierarchical Control

Traditional leadership structures are inherently toxic because they are based on fundamental inequality. They create artificial scarcity of power, agency, and recognition. They establish winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, the worthy and the unworthy.

This toxicity manifests in multiple ways:

Learned Helplessness: When people are consistently told what to do and how to do it, they lose the capacity for independent thought and action. The system creates dependency whilst simultaneously criticising people for being dependent.

Psychological Splitting: Hierarchical systems force people to split themselves—to present an acceptable face to authority whilst suppressing their authentic selves. This creates internal conflict and prevents genuine human flourishing.

Systemic Gaslighting: The Domination System requires people to deny their own experience and accept the organisation’s version of reality. When this reality conflicts with lived experience, it creates cognitive dissonance and psychological distress.

Competitive Scarcity: By creating artificial hierarchies and limited advancement opportunities, traditional leadership systems pit people against each other rather than fostering collaboration and mutual support.

The Biological Fallacy and Economic Obsolescence

One of the most persistent justifications for hierarchical leadership is the claim that it’s ‘natural’—that dominance hierarchies exist throughout the animal kingdom. This argument conveniently ignores the vast diversity of organisational forms in nature, many of which operate through cooperation, symbiosis, and distributed intelligence.

Moreover, humans have evolved beyond simple dominance hierarchies. Our capacity for language, abstract thinking, and moral reasoning enables forms of social organisation that transcend the crude dynamics of alpha-beta relationships. Clinging to dominance-based leadership isn’t natural—it’s regressive.

The domination system also has profound economic implications. By concentrating decision-making power in the hands of a few, it dramatically underutilises human intelligence and creativity. Most people spend their working lives having their capabilities suppressed rather than expressed.

This isn’t just unfortunate for individuals—it’s economically inefficient. Organisations that tap into the full intelligence of their members consistently outperform those that rely on hierarchical command structures. The domination system isn’t just morally problematic; it’s also economically obsolete.

The Ancient Poison: From Kings to CEOs

Theologian Walter Wink’s analysis of what he called the ‘Domination System’ reveals the deep historical roots of our leadership obsession. This system, which emerged with the rise of kings and empires thousands of years ago, operates on a simple premise: some people are meant to rule, others to be ruled. Violence, or the threat of it, maintains this order.

The Domination System didn’t disappear with the fall of monarchies—it simply evolved. Corporate hierarchies, with their elaborate chains of command, performance reviews, and punishment systems, are direct descendants of royal courts and slave plantations. The language may have changed from ‘subjects’ and ‘chattels’ to ’employees’, from ‘divine right’ to ‘shareholder value’, but the underlying structure remains remarkably similar.

We celebrate charismatic CEOs, write endless books about leadership principles, and chase after the latest management philosophies, never questioning whether the entire edifice is built on rotten foundations. What we call ‘leadership’ is simply the latest incarnation of an ancient system of domination that has outlived its usefulness and now actively harms the very organisations it claims to serve.

Beyond the Myth of Indispensability

Traditional leaders often derive their power from being indispensable—from being the bottleneck through which all important decisions must flow. This creates a perverse incentive structure where leaders benefit from organisational dysfunction and dependency.

The most effective leaders—those working towards the obviation of leadership—actively work against this dynamic. They distribute knowledge, capabilities, and decision-making authority. They make themselves dispensable not through neglect but through systematic empowerment of others.

But this requires recognising that the goal isn’t better leadership—it’s the elimination of leadership as we have come to understand it.

The Spiritual Dimension: Consciousness Beyond Domination

Wink emphasised that the Domination System isn’t just a political or economic arrangement—it’s a spiritual reality that shapes how we understand ourselves and our relationships. The Domination System indoctrinates us from a very early age to believe that power over others is desirable, that competition is natural, and that hierarchy is inevitable.

Dismantling the Domination System requires not just new organisational structures but a fundamental shift in consciousness. It requires recognising the inherent worth and dignity of every person, not as an abstract principle but as a lived reality that shapes how we organise ourselves.

This is why leadership reform and leadership training never works. You cannot fix a fundamentally toxic system by making it more humane. You can only transcend it entirely.

The Revolutionary Path Forward

Leading the obviation of leadership isn’t about better management techniques—it’s about participating in humanity’s evolution beyond the Domination System. It’s about creating islands of post-domination reality within a world still largely organised around hierarchical control.

This work is inherently subversive. It challenges some of the deepest assumptions of our economic and political systems. It suggests that the emperor of traditional leadership has no clothes—that what we’ve been told is necessary for order and productivity is actually the source of much disorder and waste. Putin’s Russia offers a topical example: a system built around strongman leadership that produces chaos, inefficiency, and catastrophic decision-making whilst claiming to provide order and strength.

Inevitable Resistance, Inevitable Transformation

The Domination System doesn’t give up easily. It has thousands of years of momentum behind it and sophisticated mechanisms for perpetuating itself. People who have benefited from hierarchical privilege will resist changes that threaten their position. Those who have internalised domination dynamics may struggle to imagine alternatives.

But transformation is possible. Throughout history, humans have repeatedly transcended seemingly permanent systems of oppression. Slavery was once considered economically necessary and divinely ordained. Monarchy was thought to be the natural order of government. These systems seemed permanent until they weren’t.

The Courage to Abandon Leadership

Perhaps the most radical act today is refusing to lead in the traditional sense—refusing to participate in the Domination System even when it would be personally advantageous to do so. It’s choosing to build power with others rather than power over them.

This requires tremendous courage because it means giving up the seductive benefits of traditional leadership: the ego gratification, the social status, the financial rewards. It means being willing to be misunderstood by those who equate leadership with dominance.

It means recognising that the very desire to be a leader may itself be a symptom of the disease we’re trying to cure.

Conclusion: The End of Leadership as We Know It

The Domination System has had a remarkable run—several thousand years of shaping human civilisation. But like all historical systems, it’s not permanent. Its toxicity is becoming increasingly apparent, its inefficiencies more costly, and its moral bankruptcy harder to ignore.

The statement that ‘the only effective leadership is leading the obviation of leadership’ points towards something much more profound than organisational reform. It points towards the possibility of human societies organised around fellowship rather than domination, creativity rather than control, and love rather than fear.

This isn’t utopian thinking—it’s evolutionary thinking. Just as humanity has evolved beyond many of its earlier organising principles, we can evolve beyond the Domination System. The question isn’t whether this will happen, but how quickly and whether we’ll lead the transition or be dragged through it, and whether the species will survive the Domination System at all.

But perhaps we should reframe that final question: Are we willing to abandon leadership entirely and discover what becomes possible when no one needs to be in charge?

Why Everything You Know About Tech Leadership Is Dangerously Wrong

January 30, 2025

Article, Collaboration, Delegation, Fellowship, Leadership, Motivation, Product development, Psychology

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Why Everything You Know About Tech Leadership Is Dangerously Wrong

Introduction

When Daniel Pink published “Drive” in 2009, he revealed something crucial about workplace motivation: complex, creative tasks like software development require more than traditional management approaches. This insight aligns with what high-stakes industries had already discovered through hard experience – that success comes from collaboration, not command. This understanding casts Fred Brooks’ Chief Programmer model, proposed in “The Mythical Man-Month,” in a particularly harsh light – especially when we consider modern software development as collaborative knowledge work (CKW).

Understanding Collaborative Knowledge Work

CKW, defined as work that requires multiple people combining their expertise to solve complex, novel problems, lies at the heart of modern software development. It demands continuous learning, shared understanding, and dynamic problem-solving – qualities that high-performing surgical teams, special forces units, flight crews, and software teams all demonstrate. These elite groups, operating in vastly different domains, have independently evolved similar collaborative practices precisely because these qualities are essential for complex, high-stakes work. These are the very qualities that the chief programmer model actively suppresses.

The Model’s Structure

The model borrowed from medical surgery teams, with a chief programmer (the “surgeon”) doing the core development work whilst being supported by a backup programmer (co-pilot), documentation writer, administrator, editor, programme clerk, toolsmith, tester, and language lawyer. This structure is deeply flawed – it not only misunderstands software development but also misrepresents modern high-stakes teamwork.

Even in surgery, the notion of the “heroic surgeon” has been largely debunked – modern operating theatres succeed through highly collaborative teamwork, clear communication, and mutual respect among all team members. Special forces units, despite their strong formal command structures, operate with remarkable fluidity in the field, where leadership often shifts based on expertise required for the current challenge. High-performing surgical teams and combat units alike rely on psychological safety, shared responsibility, and the confidence of every team member to speak up when they notice potential issues.

Similarly, modern flight deck practices have evolved far beyond the old “pilot in command” model. Despite retaining formal command structures, effective flight crews operate on principles of Crew Resource Management (CRM) where hierarchy flattens in critical situations. Just as special forces team members are trained to challenge plans that might compromise the mission, junior pilots are explicitly trained and expected to challenge senior pilots’ decisions when safety requires it.

The Leadership Paradox

The chief programmer role tends to attract technically brilliant but often problematic leaders. According to Lencioni’s “Ideal Team Player” framework, effective team members must be humble, hungry, and people-smart. Yet chief programmers frequently exhibit none of these traits:

Their “surgical” status often breeds arrogance rather than humility, exactly what modern surgical teams and special forces units work to prevent
Their hunger is narrowly focused on technical problems rather than team success
Their people-smarts are underdeveloped due to focusing solely on code
Most critically, they often fail to recognise software development as CKW, treating it instead as a solo performance with supporting acts – an approach that would be considered dangerous in modern aviation, surgery, or special operations

Knowledge and Autonomy Issues

The chief programmer becomes not just a technical bottleneck, but an autonomy-killer. Supporting team members have little freedom to make meaningful decisions or shape the system’s direction. Pink’s research shows this autonomy is crucial for motivation – yet the model systematically strips it away from most team members. In special forces terms, this creates exactly the kind of rigid thinking and inflexibility that can compromise a mission. In CRM terms, this creates exactly the kind of psychological barriers to speaking up that have caused disasters in aviation.

The Mastery Problem

The urge to improve and grow is a fundamental human motivator. Yet junior developers get little chance to develop their skills since they’re relegated to peripheral tasks. This mirrors the old medical hierarchy where junior doctors were seen but not heard – a system modern healthcare has deliberately moved away from. Special forces units, by contrast, actively develop every team member’s capabilities across multiple skills, ensuring operational flexibility and resilience. A truly hungry leader would want to develop their team’s capabilities, but chief programmers often lack this broader hunger for collective success.

Purpose and Communication

The strict hierarchy, combined with a leader who may lack people-smarts, disconnects most team members from the project’s core purpose. This parallels problems identified in aviation disasters where co-pilots felt unable to challenge captain’s decisions. When your leader can’t effectively communicate vision or build relationships, team members lose sight of their work’s broader impact. In CKW, as in special forces operations, this shared purpose is essential for coordinating complex, interdependent work.

Scale and Complexity Challenges

Modern software systems require diverse expertise that no single programmer can master – just as no single operator, pilot, or surgeon can monitor everything in their complex environments. Yet the model assumes a level of technical omniscience that breeds arrogance. A humble leader would acknowledge their limitations and leverage their team’s collective wisdom, just as modern surgical teams and special forces units rely on every member’s expertise.

Cultural Misalignment

The model’s command-and-control structure fails to recognise software development as CKW. A truly people-smart leader would understand that knowledge work, like modern special operations, aviation, and surgery, requires psychological safety, shared responsibility, and the confidence to speak up – not directives from an isolated technical genius.

Modern Solutions

Modern software teams have evolved towards structures that embrace CKW principles. One notable approach, “Product Aikido” developed by FlowChainSensei, applies the principles of harmony and energy flow from Aikido to product development and team dynamics. This methodology draws interesting parallels with Auftragstaktik – the German military principle of mission command – where leaders communicate intent and desired outcomes rather than detailed instructions. These approaches mirror the evolution in special forces, aviation, and healthcare towards flatter hierarchies and shared responsibility.

Like Auftragstaktik and modern special forces operations, Product Aikido emphasises:

Trust in team members’ abilities to make appropriate decisions
Clear communication of mission intent rather than specific methods
Freedom to adapt to changing circumstances at the point of execution
Leadership as enablement rather than control

This stands in stark contrast to the Chief Programmer model’s rigid hierarchy, instead promoting:

Humble leadership that acknowledges the collective nature of knowledge work
Hungry leaders who foster collaborative learning and innovation
People-smart management that enables knowledge sharing and cross-pollination of ideas
Clear purpose communication that helps coordinate complex, interdependent work
Team structures that support rather than impede collaborative problem-solving

Product Aikido, like modern special forces tactics, particularly highlights how traditional command-and-control structures work against the natural flow of collaborative knowledge work. Instead, it advocates for leadership approaches that enhance and direct team energy rather than constraining it, trusting in the team’s ability to self-organise around clear mission objectives.

Conclusion

Whilst Brooks got many things right about software development, the Chief Programmer Team model showcases how failing to understand software development as CKW leads to failure. Modern software teams succeed by embracing their collaborative nature, distributing both challenges and opportunities across the entire team, and creating environments where collective knowledge work can flourish. Approaches like Product Aikido demonstrate how principles of flow, mission command, and trust can create more effective and resilient teams than traditional hierarchical structures – a lesson that aligns perfectly with what special forces, aviation, healthcare, and other high-stakes domains have learned through decades of experience.

The Oxymoron of Effective Leadership

January 21, 2025

Article, Business, Collaboration, Community, Culture change, Fellowship, Leadership, Motivation, NoLeadership, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts, Quintessence

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The Oxymoron of Effective Leadership

The Leadership Paradox

Our modern obsession with leadership frameworks and development ironically undermines the very outcomes it seeks to achieve. The notion of ‘effective leadership’ has become something of a sacred cow in modern organisations. We’re bombarded with leadership frameworks, leadership courses, and leadership gurus promising to unlock the secrets of steering teams towards success. Yet there’s a fundamental contradiction at play: the very concept of leadership often undermines the most powerful drivers of human achievement.

The Power of Intrinsic Motivation

Consider for a moment what truly motivates people to do their best work. Time and again, research has shown that intrinsic motivation—that inner fire that drives us to excel—far outstrips any external prodding or direction. When individuals pursue mastery of their craft for its own sake, when they’re granted genuine autonomy over their work, and when they share a compelling common purpose with their colleagues, magic happens.

The Leadership Suppression Effect

The trouble with traditional leadership is that it frequently tramples these delicate flowers of intrinsic motivation. Even the most well-meaning leaders can inadvertently suppress the natural emergence of collaborative intelligence within their teams. By attempting to ‘lead’ from the top down, they create a subtle but pervasive dependency that dampens individual initiative and collective wisdom.

The Fellowship Alternative

Take the concept of fellowship, for instance. When people genuinely choose to work together, pooling their diverse talents and perspectives without hierarchical constraints, they often achieve remarkable outcomes. Silicon Valley’s early garage startups, Wikipedia’s vast knowledge commons, and countless open-source software projects stand testament to the power of voluntary collaboration untethered from traditional leadership structures.

The Futility of Leadership Development

The irony is that the more organisations invest in developing ‘better leaders’, the more they may be missing the point entirely. Perhaps the most effective form of leadership is the art of stepping back—creating spaces where intrinsic motivation can flourish, where fellowship can emerge organically, and where people can unite around shared purposes without the heavy hand of authority.

Coordination Without Control

This isn’t to suggest that organisations should descend into chaos or that coordination is unnecessary. Rather, it’s about recognising that the traditional leadership paradigm is fundamentally at odds with unleashing human potential. The most valuable role for those in positions of authority might be to focus on removing obstacles, fostering conditions for autonomous collaboration, and then having the wisdom to get out of the way.

Reimagining Organisational Structure

The Self-Organising Future

The truly revolutionary organisations of tomorrow might well be those that dare to question the leadership orthodoxy altogether. Instead of asking how to develop better leaders, perhaps we should be asking how to nurture environments where leadership becomes entirely unnecessary—where intrinsic motivation, fellowship, and shared purpose can work their magic unimpeded.

Conclusion: The Garden Metaphor

Natural Growth vs Directed Control

The oxymoron of effective leadership lies in this paradox: the most effective form of leadership might be its own gradual dissolution. In a world crying out for innovation, adaptation, and meaningful collaboration, isn’t it time to retire our obsession with leadership and embrace the messier but more authentic power of truly self-organising human systems? At least, is it time to surfaced our assumptions about leadership and reflect on more effective alternatives?

After all, as any gardener knows, the most vibrant gardens aren’t those where each plant is meticulously directed, but those where the right conditions allow natural growth to flourish. The same is true for human potential in our organisations.

Replacing Executives With AI

November 11, 2024

AI, Alien tech, Article, Automation, Business, Culture change, Innovation, Joy, Leadership, Management, Marshall Model, NoLeadership, NoManagement, Progress, Quintessence, Reinvention, Rightshifting

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Replacing Executives With AI

The AI Executive Is Already Here

The algorithmic transformation of corporate leadership is already underway. BlackRock’s Aladdin platform helps financial institutions worldwide manage and analyze investment portfolios worth trillions of dollars. Major corporations increasingly rely on AI systems for strategic decision-making, from supply chain optimization to risk assessment. The future isn’t coming; it’s already arrived, albeit quietly and without a corner office.

AI is by now well known for its errors and hallucinations—its tendency to confidently assert falsehoods and make peculiar mistakes. So an ideal tool to replace the tools running our organisations today? At first glance, AI might seem a preposterous basis for replacing human leadership. Yet, when we consider the track record of human executives—the spectacular corporate failures, the misguided mergers, the missed technological revolutions, and the countless strategic blunders that have sunk formerly mighty organisations—perhaps AI’s occasional confabulations don’t seem so disqualifying after all. At least AI’s errors are predictable, measurable, and systematically improvable, unlike human hubris and groupthink.

The Case for Silicon Leadership

What AI Brings to the Boardroom

Data Processing at Scale: Modern AI systems can analyze vast datasets to identify patterns and trends beyond human capability
Consistent Decision-Making: AI systems apply the same criteria consistently across decisions
Real-time Adaptation: Ability to continuously update strategies based on incoming data
Audit Trails: Every decision can be traced back to its underlying data and logic
Systematic Learning: Capability to learn from outcomes across multiple scenarios

Real-World Applications and Limitations

In the financial sector, algorithmic trading systems now handle the majority of stock market transactions, demonstrating how AI can manage complex, real-time decisions. However, the 2010 Flash Crash showed the risks of automated systems operating without proper oversight, leading to new regulations for algorithmic trading.

Similar patterns emerge in other industries.

The Human Cost and Opportunity

Beyond the C-Suite

The integration of AI into corporate decision-making is already reshaping organisational structures. According to a 2023 McKinsey study, companies are increasingly automating routine management tasks while creating new roles focused on AI oversight and implementation.

Emerging Roles

The transformation is creating new positions that bridge the gap between traditional management and AI system, and providing candidate positions for AI tro ease into:

AI Risk Officers

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

Senior positions responsible for overseeing AI-related risks across the organisation. They evaluate potential failures, biases, and unintended consequences of AI systems. Specific duties include:

Developing AI risk frameworks
Monitoring AI system performance and safety
Coordinating responses to AI-related incidents
Ensuring AI systems operate within acceptable risk parameters
Liaising with regulatory bodies on AI compliance

Algorithmic Compliance Managers

Specialists who ensure AI systems meet regulatory requirements and internal governance standards. Their role encompasses:

Auditing AI decision-making processes
Documenting algorithm changes and updates
Ensuring transparency in automated decisions
Managing model validation procedures
Maintaining compliance with AI-specific regulations
Overseeing algorithmic impact assessments

AI-Human Interface Designers

Experts who design and optimise the interaction between human employees and AI systems. Their responsibilities include:

Creating intuitive interfaces for AI tools
Developing protocols for AI-human collaboration
Optimising workflow integration between AI and human teams
Training staff on effective AI collaboration
Gathering and implementing user feedback
Ensuring AI systems complement rather than frustrate human work

Digital Ethics Officers

Positions focused on the ethical implications of AI deployment in business operations. Their role involves:

Developing ethical frameworks for AI use
Ensuring AI decisions align with company values
Addressing bias and fairness in AI systems
Managing stakeholder concerns about AI deployment
Overseeing ethical impact assessments
Establishing guidelines for responsible AI use

These roles reflect a crucial shift in corporate structure where the focus isn’t on replacing human judgment but on creating frameworks for effective human-AI collaboration. Each position requires a unique blend of technical knowledge, business acumen, and understanding of human factors.

Implementation: Current State of Practice

Case Study: Supply Chain Management

Major retailers like Walmart and Amazon use AI systems for inventory management and demand forecasting. These systems have demonstrated success in:

Reducing stockouts
Optimizing delivery routes
Predicting seasonal demand
Managing supplier relationships

The Regulatory Landscape

Existing Frameworks

Current corporate governance frameworks are being tested by AI implementation:

The EU’s AI Act proposes specific requirements for high-risk AI systems in business (note: none of these requirements apply to high-risk human executives)
The SEC has guidelines for algorithmic trading systems
Financial regulators worldwide are developing AI governance frameworks

Key Regulatory Challenges

Establishing clear accountability for AI decisions (wouldn’t it be nice to have clear accountability for human decisions, too?)
Ensuring transparency in algorithmic decision-making (ditto for human decision-making)
Protecting against systemic risks (hah!)
Maintaining fair competition (double hah!)

Looking Ahead: The Inevitable AI Takeover

Let’s be brutally honest: human executives are running on borrowed time. While the current narrative favours a diplomatic “hybrid” approach, the trajectory is clear. AI will replace most human executives, and likely sooner than we care to admit.

Consider the fundamentals: AI systems don’t play office politics, don’t demand golden parachutes, don’t make decisions based on ego, and don’t suffer from the cognitive biases that plague human decision-making. They don’t take two-hour lunch breaks, form old boys’ networks, act like sexual predators, or make crucial decisions based on who they played golf with last weekend.

More importantly, AI systems are improving exponentially while human executive capability remains largely static. Our current crop of executives was trained for a world that no longer exists—one where quarterly planning cycles made sense and where gut feeling was a valid business tool. Today’s business environment demands an absence of human cognitive biases, and real-time adaptation to vast streams of data, something humans simply cannot do effectively.

The resistance to full AI leadership stems more from human psychology than business logic. We comfort ourselves with platitudes about human judgment and emotional intelligence, but the data increasingly shows that many supposed “human” leadership qualities can be effectively simulated or rendered unnecessary by well-designed systems. And that’s before we even start looking critically at the whole “leadership” landscape.

The “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”—who guards the guards—question that has haunted human power structures for millennia becomes elegantly dissolvable with AI executives. Unlike their human counterparts, AI systems can be made truly transparent, their decision-making processes fully auditable, their biases measurable and correctable.

The organisations that will dominate the next decades won’t be those that find the perfect balance between human and machine leadership. They’ll be those that have the courage to fully embrace AI leadership, relegating humans to advisory and oversight roles rather than executive decision-making positions. The future of leadership isn’t a dance between silicon and carbon—it’s a changing of the guard.

For those executives reading this: your best career move might be positioning yourself as part of the transition team rather than resisting the inevitable. The writing isn’t just on the wall; it’s in the data, the algorithms, and the bottom line.

Conclusion: The Path Forward

The transformation of corporate leadership through AI is not a simple replacement of humans with machines. Instead, it’s an evolution toward systems that leverage AI’s undoubted strengths. Success will come to organisations that can effectively exploit these elements while maintaining strong governance and risk management frameworks (also AI-enabled).

The key is not to ask whether AI will replace human executives, but how long will it take to happen? AI is the true “innovation” to which so many organisations have been, as yet, only paying lip service.

Organisational Psychotherapy: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

October 14, 2024

Action, Actionable Insights, Article, Collective psyche, Culture change, Dialogue, Leadership, Lean, Management, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence, Therapy

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Organisational Psychotherapy: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

In the realm of organisational development, there’s a growing recognition that effective and sustainable transformation requires more than just talk therapy. Whilst traditional approaches to organisational psychotherapy have often relied heavily on dialogue and discussion, a new paradigm is emerging—one that places action at the core of the therapeutic process. This post explores how taking concrete actions can dramatically accelerate the surfacing and examination of shared assumptions and beliefs within organisations.

The Limitations of Talk Therapy in Organisational Settings

The Comfort of the Couch

Superficial organisational psychotherapy often mirrors individual therapy—lots of talking, analysing, and theorising. Whilst these discussions can provide valuable insights, they can also create a false sense of progress. Organisations might feel they’re addressing issues when, in reality, they’re merely dicking about.

The Gap Between Theory and Practice

Just as a person in therapy might intellectually understand their issues without changing their behaviour, organisations can become adept at discussing their problems without acting to address them. This gap between understanding and action can lead to frustration and stagnation.

Action as a Catalyst for Organisational Insight

Embodied Learning

When organisations take action, they engage in a form of embodied learning. Rather than just thinking and talking about change, they experience it. This visceral experience can reveal assumptions and beliefs that might never surface in a meeting room or therapy session.

The Shock of the New

Action often creates situations that challenge the status quo. When Zappos implemented holacracy, a self-management system, it quickly revealed deeply held assumptions about hierarchy and decision-making that no amount of discussion had previously uncovered.

Going to the Gemba

There’s a host of material in the Lean literature about going to the Gemba – the place where work actually takes place – to learn what’s actually happening (rather than what managers think is happening).

Practical Approaches to Action-Oriented Organisational Psychotherapy

Experimental Culture

Foster an environment where small, controlled experiments are not just allowed but encouraged. When Spotify introduced its “squad” model, it did so incrementally, allowing the organisation to learn and adapt as hidden assumptions about teamwork and accountability came to light. See also: Toyota Kata – the Improvement Kata.

Real-World Simulations

Create scenarios that mimic real-world challenges. When IDEO wants to help a company innovate, they often use the “Deep Dive” technique—a compressed timeframe to solve a specific problem. This intense, action-oriented approach quickly surfaces team dynamics and hidden biases.

Reverse Engineering Success and Failure

Instead of just discussing past successes or failures, actively recreate the conditions that led to them. When Toyota practises its “Go and See” philosophy, managers physically go to the site of a problem, often revealing assumptions about processes that weren’t apparent from reports or discussions alone.

The Role of Reflection in Action-Based Organisational Therapy

Structured Debriefing

After each action or experiment, conduct thorough debriefings. The U.S. military’s “After Action Review” process is an much-studied model, focusing not just on what happened, but why it happened and what beliefs or assumptions influenced the outcomes.

Narrative Reconstruction

Encourage team members to construct narratives around their experiences. When Pixar reviews its film production process, team members share stories about their experiences, often revealing underlying assumptions about creativity and collaboration that wouldn’t emerge in a traditional review.

Overcoming Resistance to Action-Oriented Approaches

Fear of Failure

Many organisations resist action-oriented approaches due to a fear of failure. Leaders might choose instead to reframe failure as a valuable source of information.

The Illusion of Consensus

Talk-based approaches can sometimes create an illusion of consensus that action can quickly dispel.

The Therapist as Action Catalyst

In this new paradigm, the organisational therapist becomes less of a traditional counsellor and more of an action catalyst. They invite the design of experiments, the creation of scenarios, and facilitate reflection processes that turn everyday organisational activities into opportunities for deep insight and learning.

Conclusion: From Talking the Talk to Walking the Walk

Organisational psychotherapy that emphasises action over talk represents a powerful evolution in how we approach organisational change and development. By moving beyond the comfort of discussion and into the realm of concrete action, organisations can more quickly and effectively surface the hidden assumptions and shared beliefs that truly drive their behaviour.

This approach doesn’t negate the value of dialogue—rather, it provides a richer context for those conversations. When words are grounded in recent, relevant experiences, they carry more weight and lead to more meaningful change.

As organisations navigate increasingly complex and rapidly changing environments, the ability to quickly surface, examine, and evolve shared assumptions and beliefs becomes ever more valuable. Action-oriented organisational psychotherapy offers a path not just to talking about change, but to embodying it.

This approach aligns with the spirit of Kurt Lewin’s work on action research and organisational change. Lewin emphasised the importance of action in understanding and changing social systems. By embracing action as a core component of organisational psychotherapy, we open the door to deeper understanding and more profound transformation.

Leadership Is a Crock, but Transformation Is Still Possible

September 24, 2024

Actionable Insights, Alien tech, Antimatter principle, Article, Attendants, Collaboration, Culture change, Fellowship, Leadership

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Leadership Is a Crock, but Transformation Is Still Possible

In the world of business improvement, we’re often told that strong leadership is the key to success. But what if I told you that’s a load of codswallop? Let’s explore why traditional leadership is wayyy overrated and how you can still achieve transformations in the way the work works without relying on the bigwigs at the top.

The Leadership Myth: Why It’s Rubbish

Empty Suits and Hot Air

How many times have you sat through a company meeting, listening to some bloke in an expensive suit rabbiting on about ‘synergy’ and ‘paradigm shifts’? These so-called leaders often spout more hot air than a kettle on the boil. The truth is, many of them couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, let alone lead a transformation in the way the work works.

The Peter Principle in Action

Ever heard of the Peter Principle? It’s the idea that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their level of incompetence. In other words, your leaders might be brilliant at their old jobs, but utterly rubbish at actually leading. It’s like expecting a star footballer to suddenly become a top-notch manager – it rarely works out that way.

Why Transformation Doesn’t Need Fancy Leadership

The Power of the Shop Floor

Transformation in the way the work works isn’t about some big cheese telling everyone what to do. It’s about the people doing the actual work, day in and day out. These are the folk who know where the real problems lie and how to fix them. They don’t need some stuffed shirt from head office or the sixth floor to tell them how to do their jobs better.

Continuous Improvement Is Everyone’s Job

The beauty of transforming the way the work works is that it’s not about waiting for orders from on high. It’s about everyone, from the tea lady to the top dog, constantly looking for ways to improve. You don’t need permission from the higher-ups to start making things better.

How to Make It Work Without the Bigwigs

Start Small and Snowball

Begin with your own work cell or immediate team. Make small improvements and document the results. As you start to see success, others will take notice. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill – it starts small but gains momentum as it goes.

Build a Network of Like-Minded Individuals

Find others in your organisation who are keen on making things better. Create an informal network of enthusiasts. You might not have official authority, but there’s strength in numbers. It’s like forming a secret society, but instead of world domination, you’re after attending to folks’ needs better.

Use Data to Make Your Case

Numbers speak louder than words. Keep track of the improvements you make and the benefits they bring. When you can show that your efforts are saving time and money, even the most stubborn managers might start to pay attention (but don’t count on it – evidence rarely wins out over entrenched narratives).

Focus on Solving Real Problems

Don’t get bogged down in jargon or specific approaches. Instead, focus on attending to the actual needs of the Folks That Matter™. When people see you making their lives easier, they’ll be more likely to get on board with your efforts.

Conclusion: Who Needs Leaders Anyway?

While having supportive leadership can some times make things easier, it’s no prerequisite for success. With a bit of creativity, persistence, and good old-fashioned fellowship, you can start making improvements right where you are. Remember, every great movement started with a few dedicated individuals who refused to accept the status quo.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

~ Margaret Mead

So, the next time some management consultant tries to sell you on the importance of leadership, just remember: leadership is a crock, but change is still possible. Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work!

The Divine Right to Rule: Autocracy’s Self-Serving Illusion

July 17, 2024

Article, Business, Empathy, Fellowship, Innovation, Leadership, Management

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The Divine Right to Rule: Autocracy’s Self-Serving Illusion

In the world of business, a peculiar phenomenon persists: the stubborn belief among many managers and executives that autocracy is not only practical but their God-given right. This delusion of grandeur often leads to a toxic work environment that stifles innovation and crushes employee morale. Let’s unmask this self-serving illusion and examine its consequences.

The Autocrat’s Creed: Efficiency Through Control

The Myth of the All-Knowing Leader

Many executives fancy themselves as omniscient beings, blessed with an unparalleled understanding of their business. They convince themselves that their lofty position grants them a bird’s-eye view of the company, rendering the insights of ‘lowly’ front line employees irrelevant. This myopic view often leads to decisions that are woefully out of touch with realities in the trenches.

The Illusion of Speed

Autocrats often justify their approach by claiming it’s faster. “We don’t have time for dialogue and consensus,” they argue, ignoring the fact that poorly thought-out decisions often require more time to fix than they saved in the making. They delude themselves that their snap judgments are always right, conveniently forgetting the times when their hasty decisions led to costly mistakes.

The Emperor’s New Clothes: Surrounding Themselves with Yes-Men

The Echo Chamber Effect

Executives who believe in their divine right to rule often surround themselves with sycophants who reinforce their delusions. These yes-men create an echo chamber, shielding the leader from dissenting opinions and perpetuating the myth of their infallibility.

The Illusion of Respect

Autocratic leaders often mistake fear for respect. They delude themselves into thinking that their employees’ compliance stems from admiration rather than self-preservation. This misinterpretation further reinforces their belief in the righteousness of their approach.

The God Complex: Infallibility and Accountability

Above Reproach

Many autocratic leaders view themselves as beyond criticism. They rationalise this by thinking, “I’m in charge because I know best.” This self-granted immunity from critique not only prevents them from learning and improving but also breeds resentment among their staff.

Shifting Blame, Claiming Credit

When things go wrong, autocratic leaders often find convenient scapegoats among their subordinates. Conversely, they’re quick to claim credit for successes, even when they result from their employees’ hard work, despite, not because of, their leadership.

The Cost of Delusion: A Reality Check

Stifled Innovation

By believing that all good ideas must come from the top, autocratic leaders squander the collective intelligence of their workforce. They fail to realise that innovation often comes from those closest to the problems, not those furthest from them.

High Turnover, Low Morale

Autocrats often delude themselves that employee loyalty can be commanded rather than earned. They’re then surprised by high turnover rates and low morale, failing to connect these issues to their leadership style.

Breaking the Spell: A Call for Self-Reflection

Is it yet time for autocratic leaders to break free from their self-imposed delusions? True competence isn’t about wielding power, but about empowering others. It’s about creating an environment where ideas can flourish, regardless of their origin.

Managers and executives might choose to realise that their position doesn’t grant them divine wisdom or some absolute right to rule. Instead, it confers the responsibility to harness the collective intelligence and creativity of their people.

The most effective are those who can set aside their egos, acknowledge their limitations, and create a collaborative environment where everyone’s strengths can shine. Is it yet time for autocrats to step down from their gilded thrones and join their troops in the trenches of innovation and progress?

Exploring Shared Assumptions and Beliefs with the Help of an AI Chatbot

March 27, 2024

Actionable Insights, AI, Alien tech, Article, Business, Chatbots, Collective psyche, Conversations, Dialogue, Improvement, Leadership, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence

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Exploring Shared Assumptions and Beliefs with the Help of an AI Chatbot

Introduction

As businesses strive for innovation and growth, they often find themselves running up against unseen barriers – ingrained ways of thinking and behaving that can severely limit their ambitions and ability to adapt. In many cases, these constraining (shared) beliefs and assumptions live under the surface, making them extremely difficult to identify and uproot.

This sample dialogue (below) aims to illustrate how engaging with an AI chatbot like Claude can provide a fresher, more impartial perspective to help bring those unconscious blockers into the light. By asking probing questions and suggesting reframes, an AI can serve as a cooperative thinking partner to explore the root causes behind an organisation’s collective blind spots.

Let’s take a look at how this conversational process might unfold:
(Note: this is an actual dialogue generated by ClaudeAI)

Overcoming Organisational Blind Spots: A Candid Dialogue

Are Collective Mindsets Holding Us Back?

Business Team: We’re really struggling as a team at work. Our growth and innovation have hit a plateau, and we can’t seem to get over this hump. We feel like there are some underlying assumptions or beliefs that we all unconsciously share that are limiting our thinking, but we can’t quite put our finger on what they are. Any thoughts?

Claude: That’s an insightful observation. Could you elaborate on the areas where your team has faced repeated roadblocks or struggled to adapt? Have you noticed any patterns in how new ideas get instantly dismissed or shut down?

The Perils of Risk-Aversion

Business Team: You know, now that you mention it, we do tend to instinctively shut down ideas that seem too ambitious or radically different from our current model. There’s an assumption that taking big swings is too risky and that we’re better off sticking to incremental innovations.

Claude: I see, so there seems to be an excessive aversion to risk-taking that could be crippling your team’s ability to innovate more boldly. Where might this belief originate from? Perhaps past failures that bred excessive caution within the team?

Overconfidence from Past Successes

Business Team: And you’re right, we may be overly reliant on past glories and successes rather than pushing for true disruption these days.

Claude: Overconfidence and complacency from previous successes is a common pitfall for teams. Have you explored where those constraining beliefs originated within your group? Sometimes they start from overcorrecting after a past failure. Or they take root from excessive short-term focus and risk-aversion in decision making over time.

Business Team: You’ve hit the nail on the head. We can trace the risk-aversion back to a few high-profile product launches that failed a few years ago. And the reverence for our old products stems from the founders still being closely involved, constantly reminiscing about how we initially disrupted the market.

Shattering Ingrained Narratives

Claude: Those do seem like major sources of the limiting beliefs constraining your team’s thinking. But how can you start dismantling and changing those ingrained narratives collectively? Here are some suggestions:

Make the limiting beliefs explicit and discuss them openly together as a team. Bringing these unconscious biases into the light is key.
Have you analyzed instances where those beliefs caused you to miss opportunities and calculated the cost of leaving innovation on the table as a group?
Could you find examples of competitors or companies in other industries who have succeeded by doing the opposite – embracing risks, continuously reinventing themselves? Study how they cultivated a different organizational mindset.
Implement structural changes to counteract the limiting beliefs. For instance, explicitly weighing the cost of inaction, having an “innovation ombudsman” role, or celebrating failed experiments more than static successes.
Bring in fresh perspectives through new hires, industry experts, or even customers who can challenge the status quo assumptions.

The ultimate ambition might be to make curiosity, experimentation, and an appetite for disruption core cultural values for your team and organisation.

Business Team: This is immensely helpful. We have a much clearer picture now of how to diagnose and deliberately shift our unhelpful collective beliefs as a team. Change starts by bringing those unconscious biases into the light through open discussion. We really appreciate you laying out such a detailed framework – we’re energized to start implementing these ideas right away.

Bringing in an Organisational Psychotherapist

Sometimes, even with the best intentions, it can be extremely difficult for a team to identify and overcome their own deep-seated collective assumptions and beliefs on their own. This is where bringing in an outside organisational psychotherapist can be invaluable…

By prompting deeper reflection, offering new perspectives, and designing tailored interventions, an experienced organisational psychotherapist or AI assistant can catalyse the crucial process of surfacing and reflecting upon an organisation’s dysfunctional beliefs and narratives.

While working with a human expert may ultimately be advisable for any complex organisational transformation, this dialogue demonstrates how an AI like Claude can provide a potential first step. Through probing inquiries and analytical detachment, an AI chatbot can shed light on the obscured mental models that might be unwittingly obstructing an organisation’s path to greater innovation and growth.

The Corporate World’s Superficial Psychology

March 26, 2024

Article, Business, Capability development, Culture change, Improvement, Joy, Leadership, Organisational effectiveness, Psychology, Quintessence

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The Corporate World’s Superficial Psychology

Businesses Ignore Deming’s Call for Real Behavioural Insight

W. Edwards Deming, the pioneering management thinker, strongly advocated for businesses to develop a deeper understanding of psychology in order to optimise systems, drive improvement, and bring joy and pride in work to the workplace.

“Understanding psychology, the study of human behaviour, is the key to managing people.”

Deming wrote. Yet decades after Deming’s teachings, most businesses remain woefully ignorant about true human psychology and behavioural drivers.

The Superficial ‘Pop Psych’ Fixation

Instead of delving into substantive research from psychology, cognitive science, and behavioural economics, the corporate world tends to favour simplistic “pop psych” maxims and heuristics. Businesses love to tout the latest bestselling books promoting ideas like “positive thinking”, “grit”, “growth mindsets”, or “mindfulness” as the secrets to better employee engagement and productivity. Consultants peddle pseudoscientific personality assessments built on shaky Jungian foundations. Corporate training programmes regurgitate self-evident platitudes about “emotional intelligence.”

Human Behaviour Is Central to Everything

This cavalier dilettantism toward psychology is concerning because human behaviour is central to every aspect of an organisation – its culture, management practices, teamwork, decision-making processes, innovation, marketing, you name it. If companies fail to rigorously study and apply research-based behavioural insights, they are effectively driving blind.

Ignoring the Science of Human Behaviour

Psychology is a legitimate field of science that has produced a wealth of empirical findings on human cognition, motivation, bias, social dynamics, and more. And not just academic theories, but proven applications in areas like user experience design, behaviour change, survey methodology, and marketing. Ignoring this body of knowledge is akin to an engineer neglecting physics or materials science.

The System of Profound Knowledge

Deming admonished that businesses must take a fundamentally different view of work, one focused on understanding systems holistically – including the human dimensions and variation. Yet even today, businesses tend to fixate on simplistic notions like employee incentives, traditional hierarchies, coercion, and other regressive pop psych-led management dogma. They give short shrift to the scientific realities of how people actually think, feel and behave.

A True Commitment to Understanding People

Of course, as Deming taught, psychology alone does not automatically confer excellence in management. It requires a coherent philosophy, sustained practice, and an unwavering commitment to continual learning, all of which many businesses still lack. But grasping human behaviour remains a crucial foundational layer.

For companies to truly embrace people-centric management as Deming advocated, they might choose to move beyond gimmicky pop psych trends and selective, self-serving interpretations of research. They may, instead, choose to dive deep into the expansive knowledge base of rigorous behavioural science – including the inconvenient truths it reveals – and apply those insights in thoughtful, judicious ways. Only then can businesses hope to make substantive and lasting improvements. Of course, improvement of any kind seem decidedly out of favour at the moment.

What Are You Missing Out On?

March 22, 2024

Article, Business, Capability development, Collective psyche, Culture change, Improvement, Innovation, Joy, Leadership, Management, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Organisational Therapy, Paradigm shifts, Quintessence

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What Are You Missing Out On?

In any organisation, the beliefs and assumptions that everyone holds in common can have a profound impact on culture, productivity, and overall success. By neglecting shared assumptions and beliefs you may be missing out on harnessing the power of aligning them for optimal performance. But what exactly could this approach unlock for your organisation?

For Executives and Senior Managers

Shaping the Organisational Mindset

As a leader, you set the tone for the entire company’s culture and worldview. However, failing to examine and actively shape the company’s ingrained assumptions can lead to misalignment and hinder performance. Organisational psychotherapy illuminates existing belief systems – a.k.a. the collective mindset – and provides means to cultivate an organisational mindset centered on the things that matter to you, and a unified vision for success.

Transcending Limiting Assumptions

Over time, organisations develop deep-rooted assumptions that act as invisible shackles, limiting innovation, adaptation and achievement of goals. You could be missing out on breaking through these limitations by not exploring the underlying group psyche. Organisational psychotherapy techniques identify and reframe constraining assumptions, allowing you and your peers, and your workforce, to operate from an empowered, possibility-focused perspective.

For Middle Managers

Bridging Misaligned Beliefs

In the pivotal role of middle management, you navigate the shared assumptions of both leadership and frontline teams. Unaddressed, differing beliefs between groups can breed misunderstanding and hinder synergy. Organisational psychotherapy provides a framework for uncovering disconnects and fostering more cohesive, aligned assumptions across all levels.

Fostering Trust and Psychological Safety

Highly effective teams are built on a foundation of trust and the ability to take interpersonal risks. You could be missing out on this key ingredient if psychological barriers rooted in distrustful and deleterious assumptions remain unaddressed. Psychotherapeutic interventions help everyone examine and reshape beliefs around vulnerability, conflict, and collaboration.

For Technical Workers

Unleashing Pioneering Thinking

For technical roles requiring cutting-edge solutions, limiting assumptions around “how things are done” stifle innovation. You may be missing out on radically more effective approaches by not exploring and expanding your team’s collective assumptions about e.g. what is possible. Psychotherapy illuminates blind spots and reframes beliefs to open minds to truely different thinking.

Fostering Knowledge-Sharing

In highly specialised technical domains, knowledge-sharing is critical but often obstructed by entrenched assumptions of competence hierarchies or domain territoriality. Organisational psychotherapy provides means to surface and reflect on these counterproductive beliefs, instead opeing the door to assumptions that celebrate joyful work, collaborative growth and learning.

Summary

Embracing organisational psychotherapy unlocks an often-overlooked yet powerful source of competitive advantage – the shared assumptions and beliefs that underpin an organisation’s culture, communication, and performance. By neglecting this dimension, you may be missing out on by not giving organisational psychotherapy serious consideration as a powerful tool for your toolbox:

For Executives and Senior Managers:
The ability to purposefully shape an organisational mindset aligned with your shared vision and strategic objectives. As well as the opportunity to transcend limiting assumptions that constrain innovation, adaptation, and achievement.

For Middle Managers:
A framework for bridging misaligned beliefs across levels that breed misunderstanding and hinder synergy. And fostering a bedrock of trust and psychological safety that enables teams to take interpersonal risks and collaborate effectively.

For Technical Workers:
Unleashing pioneering, radically different thinking by reframing beliefs around “how things are done.” And cultivating knowledge-sharing by dispelling assumptions of competence hierarchies and domain territoriality.

At every level of an organisation, insidious assumptions and beliefs can act as unseen forces, obstructing potential and stalling progress. You could be missing out on dismantling these forces and instead harnessing the power of shared vision, alignment of mindsets, and collaborative beliefs.

Organisational psychotherapy provides the insight and means to illuminate, examine, and reflect on the collective beliefs and assumptions influencing your organisation’s culture and performance. Is it yet time you explored how to unleash this underutilised power and stop missing out on achieving new heights of success?

The Counter-Cultural Guide to Business Management

September 14, 2023

Alien tech, Article, Business, Culture change, Leadership, Management, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Quintessence

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The Counter-Cultural Guide to Business Management

Are you stuck in the rut of conventional business practices and stale boardroom jargon? Is it time to shake things up? Discover why embracing your inner rebel could be the game-changer your business desperately needs.

Why Be Counter-Cultural in Business?

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re tired of the status quo in business management. I get it. I’m tired too. The well-trodden paths often lead to stale results. So, let’s talk about why being counter-cultural isn’t just a lifestyle choice but a business imperative.

What’s Wrong with the Status Quo?

We’ve all been there, sitting in a board meeting, listening to the same jargon. Synergy. Leverage. Scalability. Blah. Blah. Blah. These buzzwords are often bandied about without much thought. They’re safe. They’re conventional. But does following the crowd actually add value? I’d suggest, not really.

How Can Counter-Culture Help?

Being counter-cultural in a business setting doesn’t mean you should throw all caution to the wind. It’s not about being reckless but rather about thinking differently. Challenging the status quo can lead to innovation. For example, rejecting the standard 9-to-5 workday could lead you to explore more flexible work arrangements that can, in turn, increase productivity and employee satisfaction.

What Are the Risks?

Now, taking a counter-cultural stance isn’t without its risks. You’ll face resistance, both internal and external. People are comfortable with what they know, and change is hard. But remember, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The risks are often outweighed by the potential for revolutionary change.

How to Make the Leap?

If you’re convinced that counter-culture is the way forward, start small. Test out a new idea on a small scale before fully implementing it. Gather data, listen to feedback, and then iterate. The aim isn’t to shock the system but to introduce new ways of thinking that can, over time, bring about meaningful change.

So, Is It Worth It?

In my experience, the answer is a resounding yes. Being counter-cultural has pushed me to explore uncharted territories in business and tech management. While not all ventures have been a roaring success, each one has been a learning experience. At the end of the day, it’s not just about profit margins or growth graphs. It’s about building a culture that fosters creativity, innovation, and, yes, a bit of rebellion.

So, the next time you’re in that board meeting, and someone starts talking about “synergising core competencies,” maybe it’s time to go against the grain. Be counter-cultural. You never know, it might just be the best business decision you’ve ever made.

So You’re a Manager and You Hate Your Job?

September 12, 2023

Antimatter principle, Article, Leadership, Management, Teambuilding, Toxic behaviours

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So You’re a Manager and You Hate Your Job?

So you’re a manager now. Welcome to the party! You’ll quickly find that a lot of things about the role are neither as fun nor as straightforward as you may have been led to believe. Let’s dig into the factors that make the job less glamorous than advertised.

What Makes the Job Risible?

Unrealistic Expectations: You’re now the solver of everyone’s problems. Good luck juggling everyone’s needs and desires.
Blurred Lines of Authority: You’re told you’re the boss, but often, decisions are made over your head.
Dealing With Personalities: Unlike chess pieces or cogs or Borg Drones, humans have emotions, opinions, and bad days.
Daily Drudgery: Meetings, paperwork, more meetings. Did anyone mention there’d be so much admin?

Why Is the Job Detestable?

You Can’t Just Order People Around: Gone are the days where a stern look would do the trick. You’re not in a dictatorship, you’re in an office – or not even.
Lack of Autonomy: Being a manager doesn’t mean you have all the power. In fact, it generally feels like you have less.
Accountability Without Control: When things go south, you’re the first to suffer, even if the factors were beyond your grasp. A veritable whipping boy (or girl).
Mundane Tasks: Think management is all strategy and expense account lunches and power moves? Think again. You’re also the go-to for approving holiday leaves and dealing with niggling disputes.

Remember Captain Sobel from ‘Band of Brothers’?

You might recall the character Captain Herbert M. Sobel, portrayed by David Schwimmer in the miniseries “Band of Brothers.” Sobel’s style was authoritarian, focused on discipline and regimen, often at the cost of morale and trust. His approach led to a lack of faith among his men and ultimately didn’t serve him or his troops well in the field.

Can Nonviolence Be the Answer?

Nonviolence is more than the absence of physical force; it’s about fostering an environment of respect, dialogue, and mutual understanding. Sobel’s method lacked these qualities, highlighting how ineffective a ‘command and control’ model can be.

Is Sobel’s Style a Cautionary Tale?

Absolutely. A rigid, authoritarian style might work in certain settings, but in most modern workplaces, this approach is outdated, ineffective and doomed to failure. Employees don’t respond well to leaders who operate solely on a basis of power and fear. A successful team is not a set of robots to command.

What Should You Do Instead?

Be Flexible: Adapt your style to the situation and the needs of your teams.
Communicate: Keep the lines open. No one can read minds.
Be Human: Show empathy and understanding. You’re managing people, not machines. In fact, don;t manage the people at all.”You manage things; you lead people.” ~ Grace Hooper, Rear Admiral, USN
Learn Continuously: The best managers know they don’t have all the answers and are willing to grow.

Managing is tough, no doubt. But understanding its flaws and challenges is the first step in doing it better. Don’t be a Sobel; be the manager you wish you had.

Trauma-Informed or Trauma-Inducing Leadership?

September 8, 2023

Article, Culture change, Leadership, Toxic behaviours

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Trauma-Informed or Trauma-Inducing Leadership?

What is Trauma-Informed Leadership?

Trauma-Informed Leadership is an approach that recognises the prevalence of trauma in the workforce and strives to create a supportive environment. This type of leadership acknowledges the various ways trauma can affect people’s work performance, mental health, and overall well-being. Leaders who adopt this approach aim to foster a workplace culture of understanding, compassion, and mutual respect.

What is Trauma-Inducing Leadership?

On the flip side, Trauma-Inducing Leadership does the opposite. Rather than acknowledge or accommodate for trauma, this style of leadership may inadvertently or deliberately create a toxic environment. Leaders may engage in behaviours like micromanagement, public humiliation, or even verbal abuse, causing stress, anxiety, and traumatising experiences for their employees.

How Does Each Affect Employee Well-Being?

Trauma-Informed Leadership not only fosters emotional safety but also boosts productivity and job satisfaction. Employees are more likely to engage in their work and report higher levels of mental well-being. Conversely, Trauma-Inducing Leadership can result in high staff turnover rates, reduced productivity, and a slew of mental health issues, including heightened stress and burnout.

Can Culture Shape the Leadership Style?

Yes, organisational culture can significantly influence the type of leadership that flourishes. Firms that value employee well-being and ethical conduct are more likely to develop Trauma-Informed Leadership. In contrast, high-pressure environments that focus solely on outputs and targets may inadvertently encourage Trauma-Inducing Leadership.

What Can You Do?

If you’re a leader, self-reflection is key. Consider your behaviours and their impact on your team. If you’re an employee under a Trauma-Inducing Leader, it may be beneficial to seek professional advice or consult HR. Organisations as a whole benefit from regularly reviewing leadership approaches and can choose to be willing to change to foster a healthier work environment.

In summary, the distinction between Trauma-Informed and Trauma-Inducing Leadership can make or break the workplace experience. It’s crucial for leaders to be conscious of the role they play in shaping this experience and for organisations to recognise the impact of their leadership styles on their workforce.

The Software Crisis: A 50+ Year Conundrum Waiting for a Paradigm Shift

August 18, 2023

Agility at Scale, Antimatter principle, Attendants, Business, Culture change, Leadership, Management, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Paradigm shifts, Product development, Quintessence, Software development

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The Software Crisis: A 50+ Year Conundrum Waiting for a Paradigm Shift

When the term “Software Crisis” was coined in the late 1960s, the software industry was grappling with issues of complexity, reliability, and maintainability. The rate at which technology was evolving seemed to outpace the ability to efficiently and effectively manage software projects. Yet, half a century later, we still find ourselves confronting the same challenges.

The Persistent Nature of the Crisis

Most industries undergo evolutionary shifts, which often transform the landscape and resolve the challenges of the past. However, the software domain remains an anomaly. Instead of outgrowing its initial issues, we find them compounded by the enormous scale and scope of contemporary software development. Despite more advanced tools and platforms, software bugs, project overruns, and scalability issues remain pertinent.

So, why is the software crisis still with us?

The Inherent Complexity of Software

Software is, in essence, abstract and malleable. Unlike constructing a building or manufacturing a car, where there’s a tangible product, software development involves attending to folks’ needs through weaving intricate patterns of logic. As the Needsscape evolves, it becomes increasingly challenging to untangle and reweave the strands.

Furthermore, software isn’t limited by physical laws. While you can keep adding lines of code, each new line tends to increase complexity in a non-linear fashion.(See also: #NoSoftware)

The Economic Incentives

There’s an underlying economic motive to maintain the status quo. Major software corporations, consultancy agencies, educational establishments, and even management gain from the ongoing software crisis.

Software Companies: Continuous updates, patches, and new releases mean ongoing revenue. “Perfect”, bug-free software from the outset would reduce the push for upgrades and extended support.
Consultancy Firms: A continuing crisis ensures a constant demand for experts to guide, integrate, and sustain various approaches. (Ever seen consultants hired to obviate the Software Crisis?).
Educational Institutions: The ever-evolving landscape necessitates continuous learning, translating to enrollment in courses, certifications, and further studies.
Management: The status quo often validates management hierarchies and roles. Shaking up the software development paradigm challenges established management statuses and command & control dynamics, which many in management roles find unsettling. Where’s the leadership??

The Need for a New Paradigm

While we’ve seen enhancements in methods and technologies, they don’t directly tackle the root causes of the software crisis. A paradigm shift is essential, but what should it emphasise?

People: Centralide the role of people in the software process. Recognise that while tools and technologies are marginally relevant, it’s people and teams who breathe life into software. We might choose to prioritise their well-being, motivation, and skills.
Relationships: Emphasise collaboration and communication. Siloed teams and heroic individuals exacerbate challenges. Cross-functional cooperation and fostering an environment where diverse perspectives converge can lead to better solutions.
Collective Assumptions and Beliefs: Challenge and revisit the shared beliefs and assumptions in the organisation. Often, outdated paradigms persist because they go unquestioned. By reassessing and updating these, we can pave the way for innovative approaches.

#Quintessence

The enduring software crisis mirrors the challenges inherent in software development and the economic frameworks that have crystallized around it. While vested interests might resist change, history reminds us that transformation is both inevitable and necessary. When the software industry finally experiences its paradigm shift, it will not only resolve its longstanding crisis but also unleash unprecedented avenues for innovation.

Leaders’ Inconsistencies

August 9, 2023

Antimatter principle, Article, Culture change, Dialogue, Lamentation, Leadership, Management, Memeology, Organisational Therapy, Psychology, Quintessence, Reflections, Relationships, Toxic behaviours

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Leaders’ Inconsistencies

In every institution—whether in politics, business, or broader community contexts—we frequently observe those in authority saying one thing and doing another. It’s not just about broken campaign promises or managers who preach work-life balance while flooding inboxes at midnight. This inconsistency has far-reaching implications, especially when considering the concept of pragmatic legitimacy.

Espoused Theory vs Theory in Action: An Introduction

Chris Argyris’s groundbreaking insights shed light on this phenomenon. He distinguished between “espoused theory” (what people claim they believe) and “theory in action” (how they actually behave). For example, a leader might verbally prioritize team input (“espoused theory”) but may sideline their team in decision-making processes (“theory in action”).

Impacts of Inconsistent Leadership

Erosion of Credibility: A clear disparity between words and deeds erodes leaders’ credibility. When words are at odds with by actions, followers and stakeholders are left questioning the authenticity of the leader’s commitments.
Mistrust and Cynicism: Inconsistent actions breed skepticism. Over time, this could dampen motivation and commitment, leading stakeholders to question the leader’s genuine intentions.
Ambiguity and Misdirection: When words don’t match actions, it creates confusion about actual priorities, making it difficult for subordinates to align their actions with organisational and leaders’ goals.
Organisational Dysfunction: This kind of behavior can fuel conflicts, inefficiencies, and cultivate a culture of disillusionment.
Undermining Pragmatic Legitimacy: Perhaps one of the most profound impacts is on an organisation’s pragmatic legitimacy. When stakeholders perceive that an organisation’s actions aren’t aligned with its stated goals or aren’t beneficial to them, its pragmatic legitimacy is compromised. A lack of pragmatic legitimacy means stakeholders doubt the organisation’s capacity or willingness to fulfill its promises or meet their needs, which can result in decreased support or commitment from these stakeholders.

Bridging the Divide: Recommendations for Leaders

Enhance Self-awareness: Leaders should continuously introspect and seek feedback. Recognizing one’s inconsistencies is the first step to addressing them.
Foster Open Communication: Encouraging an environment where individuals can voice concerns about perceived discrepancies promotes accountability and transparency.
Prioritize Consistency: Leaders should evaluate if they can truly align with what they promise, setting achievable expectations to maintain credibility.
Acknowledge and Amend: When discrepancies arise, leaders should admit them, apologize, and take measures to correct their course.
Continuous Learning: Regular training sessions emphasizing the importance of consistency in leadership can be instrumental.
Lead by Example: If leaders advocate specific values or principles, they must personify them in their actions.
Tend to your pragmatic legitimacy: By becoming more consistent in aligning saying with doing, thereby improving your legitimacy, stakeholders will lend increased support and commtiment to your initiatives and directions.

Navigating the Discrepancies: Recommendations for Those on the Receiving End

It’s often challenging to be on the receiving end of inconsistent leadership. It can be demotivating, confusing, and sometimes even detrimental to one’s mental health. If you find yourself in such a situation, it’s essential to take proactive steps to preserve your well-being and sanity.

Seek Clarification: If you notice a discrepancy between words and actions, ask for clarification. There might be reasons or perspectives you aren’t aware of. By seeking a clearer understanding, you can align your expectations accordingly.
Maintain Open Communication: Foster an environment where you feel empowered to communicate your feelings and perceptions. This not only helps you address potential misunderstandings but also lets leaders be aware of their inconsistencies.
Document Everything: When you see inconsistencies, make a note of them. This isn’t about “keeping score” but about having a reference point for discussions or to ground your own understanding of events.
Find Support: Confide in colleagues or friends who understand the situation. Sharing experiences can provide validation and sometimes lead to collective solutions or coping strategies.
Set Boundaries: It’s essential to protect your mental and emotional well-being. If you’re consistently receiving mixed signals, it may be necessary to set clear personal and professional boundaries to avoid burnout.
Seek External Mentorship: Connect with mentors outside your immediate work environment. They can provide an outside perspective, offer advice, or sometimes just serve as a sounding board.
Engage in Self-care: Engaging in activities that relax and rejuvenate you is crucial. Whether it’s reading, exercising, meditating, or pursuing a hobby, make sure you have an outlet to destress.
Consider Professional Counseling: If the inconsistency in leadership begins to take a toll on your mental health, consider seeking professional counseling. Therapists can provide coping mechanisms and strategies to navigate such situations.Organisational therapists can support organisation-wide initiatives to help reduce discrepancies between words and actions.
Evaluate Your Position: If you find the environment to be consistently toxic with no signs of change, it may be worth considering a change. Your well-being should always be a top priority. “Change your organisation, or change your organisation”.

Remember, in environments where leaders are inconsistent, it’s essential to prioritise your own personal well-being. By taking proactive steps, you can navigate the challenges while ensuring you remain grounded, supported, and mentally resilient.

To sum it up, pragmatic legitimacy is crucial for any organisation, and leaders play an integral role in upholding it. By aligning their words with their actions, leaders can reinforce trust, maintain credibility, and ensure that stakeholders see the organisation as a beneficial and aligned entity.

Rethinking Leadership

August 4, 2023

Article, Business, Fellowship, Leadership

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Rethinking Leadership

As we step further into the business landscape of the 21st century, we might choose to revisit some of the prevailing ideologies that have dictated our actions, one of which is the concept of leadership. For a long time, the traditional view of leadership has been championed and romanticised, often associating it with traits like assertiveness, charisma, and hierarchical authority. While leadership has conventionally played a role in guiding teams and organisations towards shared goals, the veneration of this concept can inadvertently generate negative outcomes.

The Harm in Over-Praising Leadership

The adulation of leadership often leads to an over-emphasis on the individual leader’s characteristics, competencies, and vision. This perpetuates the ‘great man’ or ‘great woman’ theory, implying that it is solely the leader who determines an organisation’s success or failure. This perspective neglects the contributions of the collective and overlooks the potential of diverse talents within the team.

Over-glorifying leadership also engenders a power dynamic that generally breeds authoritarianism, where the decisions of the ‘leader’ are deemed ultimate. This can discourage employees from voicing their ideas or expressing dissent, leading to a culture of conformity and stifling creativity and innovation.

Furthermore, this emphasis on leadership often cultivates a culture of competition rather than collaboration, as employees strive to be ‘leaders’ themselves, which can fragment the organisation’s unity.

The Power of Fellowship

To mitigate these challenges, we might choose to shift from a leadership-centric approach to one that fosters fellowship. In essence, fellowship denotes mutual support, shared goals, and collaboration, where every team member’s role and contribution is acknowledged and valued. This concept upholds a more democratic, inclusive, and participative way of working.

In a business setting, fellowship can foster a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect, which encourages open communication and idea sharing. By integrating diverse perspectives, fellowship can stimulate creativity, innovation, and better decision-making, enriching the overall business strategy.

Moreover, fellowship creates a supportive environment where individuals are willing to help one another in the pursuit of collective success. This can lead to increased employee satisfaction, motivation, and productivity, ultimately contributing to the organisation’s overall performance and well-being.

Shifting from Leadership to Fellowship

So, how do we promote the concept of fellowship in a business environment?

Empowering Team Members: Empowerment involves entrusting employees with the authority and autonomy to make decisions. This not only boosts their self-confidence but also invites them to hone their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Promoting Open Communication: Establish an environment where employees feel comfortable expressing their ideas, concerns, or criticisms. This encourages participation and engagement, leading to a more inclusive and innovative workplace.
Fostering a Collaborative Culture: Rather than competing against each other, invite each other to collaborate, share knowledge, and build on each other’s ideas. This can promote a sense of community and mutual support, essential elements of fellowship.
Recognising and Valuing Contributions: Recognise and appreciate each other’s contributions, regardless of their role or position. This can instill a sense of belonging and value, motivating everyone to contribute more effectively.

Summary

In conclusion, while leadership has been seen at the default, we might choose to understand the unintended harm we can cause by overvaluing this concept. By shifting our focus to fellowship, we can create more inclusive, collaborative, and innovative work environments. After all, in the world of business, success is not just about following a leader, and conforming to the diktats of the hierarchy, but about creating a fellowship where everyone plays their part in steering the ship to its destination.

The Assumptions That Never Change

The Agile Illusion

The AI Performance

This Is Not New

The Cargo Cult Pattern

What Would Genuine Adoption Look Like?

The Diagnosis

Further Reading

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The Church of Leadership: Why Companies Worship at an Altar Built on Faith, Not Evidence

The Prophets and Their Gospels

The Unfalsifiable Doctrine

The $366 Billion Offering Plate

The Rituals

The Inconvenient Research

Why We Believe Anyway

What Would Evidence Actually Look Like?

The Sermon Ends

Further Reading

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The Software Crisis: An Opportunity for Go-Ahead Managers to Step Up and Stand Out

Understanding the Persistence of the Problem

The Hidden Opportunities in Six Decades of Failure

Strategic Actions for Transformation Leaders

Practical Implementation Framework

Building Long-Term Leadership Capital

The Competitive Advantage of Solving the Unsolvable

The Courage to Stand Out: Confronting FOSO in Software Leadership

Your Moment to Solve the Unsolved

Further Reading

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Beyond Leadership: Dismantling Humanity’s Most Toxic Organising Principle

Designing Post-Leadership Systems

Leadership as Institutionalised Violence

The Structural Toxicity of Hierarchical Control

The Biological Fallacy and Economic Obsolescence

The Ancient Poison: From Kings to CEOs

Beyond the Myth of Indispensability

The Spiritual Dimension: Consciousness Beyond Domination

The Revolutionary Path Forward

Inevitable Resistance, Inevitable Transformation

The Courage to Abandon Leadership

Conclusion: The End of Leadership as We Know It

Further Reading

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Why Everything You Know About Tech Leadership Is Dangerously Wrong

Introduction

Understanding Collaborative Knowledge Work

The Model’s Structure

The Leadership Paradox

Knowledge and Autonomy Issues

The Mastery Problem

Purpose and Communication

Scale and Complexity Challenges

Cultural Misalignment

Modern Solutions

Conclusion

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The Oxymoron of Effective Leadership

The Leadership Paradox

The Power of Intrinsic Motivation

The Leadership Suppression Effect

The Fellowship Alternative

The Futility of Leadership Development

Coordination Without Control

Reimagining Organisational Structure

The Self-Organising Future

Conclusion: The Garden Metaphor

Natural Growth vs Directed Control

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Replacing Executives With AI

The AI Executive Is Already Here

The Case for Silicon Leadership

What AI Brings to the Boardroom

Real-World Applications and Limitations

The Human Cost and Opportunity

Beyond the C-Suite

Emerging Roles

AI Risk Officers