What I do
Understanding your organisation’s problem - diagnosis
You may know what is wrong and need help to find a solution, or you may just know that things aren’t as good as they could be. Low productivity? Lack of timely information? Unable to keep up with the changing environment?
Using theoretically sound and proven methods and models, I can help you to identify the problem and its causes.
Working through solutions with you - design
Working with you, and using the same methods and models used in diagnosis, I can help you to identify and design solutions to your organisational functioning issues to improve productivity, learning, adaptability, and viability.
Setting you up for learning, adaptation and viability - guiding implementation
Implementing change can be challenging. I can help guide you through the process while transferring knowledge and skills so that you can continue to change and adapt your organisation as required.
I utilise insights from cybernetics and model-based-management to guide the work
About cybernetics…
“Cybernetics” comes from a Greek word meaning “the art of steering”. It’s a term that Plato used - so it’s not new.
Cybernetics is about steering and controlling a system using communication and the use of timely, accurate, relevant, and appropriately presented information - towards a goal, a purpose. It is about navigating rough seas - a turbulent environment.
Cybernetics involves information feedback loops that tell us when we are deviating from our goal, so that we can take action to correct our path.
Organisational cybernetics applies this concept to the governance, management, and operations of an organisation. The word ‘governance’ is derived from the term ‘cybernetics’.
The question for the organisation is: Are we clear about our purpose, and are we set up to capture and utilise the necessary information from within the organisation, and from its environment, to respond and adapt so that we can remain viable?
An organisation that is set up cybernetically will be intelligent and adaptable. With good managers, this will support it to be productive, effective, efficient, and well governed.
About model-based management…
As organisations become large and complex high levels of central control are not possible. Further, it is not possible for managers to maintain mental models of their functioning. In such situations a model-based approach is recognised as not only beneficial, but also essential – not just a ‘nice to have’.
The Viable System Model (VSM) is a model-based approach that is well-suited to large and complex organisations that must adapt to continuous change. The model specifically facilitates local autonomy consistent with overall system coherence and cohesion, achieving control through communication rather than command.
Benefits of this approach include, but are not limited to, that:
· The model’s structure is the same throughout the organisation. That is, it applies to the organisation as a whole, and to, say, a department, or a service within a department. This provides a common language for describing and understanding the organisation’s functioning across the organisation.
· The model works on the principle of ‘communication and control’, not ‘command and control’. Each part of the organisation, at each level, has the information it needs to make the decisions that are relevant at that level.
· The model focuses on delivery of services to consumers and expressly caters to local differences within a common national strategy.
· With a focus on service delivery, the model aligns efforts of support services (e.g., people and capability, information technology, and finance) with each other, and most importantly, with operational delivery requirements.
· The model embeds into regular organisational functioning the processes required to monitor and drive adaptation to changes in the environment.
· It supports the organisation to develop clarity and transparency about service provision demand, capacity, resource requirements, constraints, cost, and value.
· It supports the organisation to develop a more detailed awareness and understanding of its functioning such that it can plan, fund, resource, manage, support, coordinate, deliver, and track service delivery, and adapt over time.
· Problems and system weaknesses can be addressed closer to their source providing a faster response, reducing bureaucracy, and improving motivation throughout the system by activating systemic leadership.
· It supports improved efficiency, effectiveness, consistency, and quality of service provision.
· It supports the achievement of operational excellence, and quality improvement by embedding their associated processes into the everyday functioning of an organisation.
It supports the definition of data and IT system requirements through a clearer, more accurate, and complete understanding of service delivery mechanisms.