2 articles
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Complex is not the same as complicated
You repair a car by looking for the cause, not a team. I explain why that difference matters and where we often go wrong.
A few years ago we were driving back from France. And then the lights on our dashboard started to come on. Orange and red lights, usually not a good sign. It was Sunday and we still had a few hundred kilometres to go. We did get home. But we needed someone who knew about these things. And the mechanic did what a good mechanic does: he searched. First in the engine, then in the parts and then in the parts of those parts. Until he found a small filter. He replaced the filter and all the lights went out.
I tell that story in a workshop on strategic thinking, because it fits so beautifully. There is one cause, you find it and you solve it. I think we are trained to think like that. And that is exactly why things go wrong when we start thinking like that about something that is not a car.
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We think in lists, not in connections
Deleting one line in Excel cost an organisation its collaboration. Why lists hide what is going on, and how you learn to draw arrows.
Have a look at your own notes from the last meeting. Chances are it is a list. A few points with asterisks in front of them, something you scribbled next to it later, and then another asterisk. In a workshop on strategic thinking I predict to the group what their notes will look like later. And that is usually right.
That is actually how we were raised. We are trained to think in lists. I do not mind that, until you make decisions based on that list. A list does show what is there. What relates to what, you do not see in it.
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