Ah yes, I certainly recognise much of the paradigm and behaviour you describe in much of your writing. Not just from myself, but from those that I have collaborated with, and those I have learned from. I also recognise:
" Their worldview was locked in. They’d built careers on linear thinking, identities invested in it"
Quite true. And that is perhaps the key behind why the civil service cannot change. It is also why organisations die, because their senior decision-makers cannot shift, where the start-ups can.
In my work and of those I am connected to, I can only do my work when those decision-makers can and wish to shift their thinking, or mindset. So, actually I tell people I do is to 'redesign services' or 'systemic service designer'. But I dont actually do that, what I do is to help those that wish to, to expand their boundaries of what they understand, and are wanting to learn a new paradigm of how to design, and manage people in what we call an organisation.
Mark, I find this a well thought out and balanced piece, thats really helpful.
It depends on what type of consulting we‘re talking about, or, more precisely maybe, about the attitude we take as a consultant. If you sell a „done-for you“ approach, you‘re trying to implement a solution, which, although many will claim otherwise, is mostly off-the-shelf. These solutions scale well and, as they are highly standardized, you don‘t need that much experience. Another approach and attitude to consulting is to not focus on the solution as such, but on the process to get to a solution. In this type of consulting, you‘re promising and selling to help the company co-create its own solution. This approach can also be standardized to a certain degree. Diagnosis (a real one), forming hypotheses about what‘s going on, designing interventions to make progress, followed by implementing these, and then evaluating again whether the intended result was achieved or not, which serves as the input for the next iteration of interventions. This approach is also standardized to a certain degree, it can scale, although it does less so with unexperienced consultants.
Thanks Marc, this is the version I spent years selling. The niggle I kept hitting was the sequence itself, diagnose, form hypotheses, design interventions, evaluate. It assumes the system holds still long enough to be diagnosed and responds predictably enough to be intervened in. Complex systems do neither. Curious how you handle it when the intervention reshapes the thing you were trying to diagnose? It's where I started to wonder/realise I was redecorating the linear paradigm rather than accepting complexity.
The evaluation happens after every single intervention. The intervention will of course reshape the system, and that’s the purpose. The diagnosis itself is already an intervention that reshapes the system. Simply announcing that a consultant is coming is an intervention, and sometimes that alone is enough to move the system in the desired direction.
Whether the system responds as predicted depends on the quality of the hypothesis, the match of the designed intervention, and how well it’s carried out. That’s the bit that doesn’t scale well, since it requires a lot of experience.
I absolutely agree there’s no guarantee an intervention will have the intended effect. But it will certainly have some kind of impact, because it disturbs the system, unless it’s used to that particular kind of intervention. What the system does with that is another matter. With experience, you get better at picking the right intervention for the intended outcome, given the actual context. Of course, you‘ll need to stay open and not always default to your standard intervention, which might have worked elsewhere. (You can of course do that, and then see whether your hypothesis was correct.)
What you described in earlier articles was a context that didn’t really seem to want what you prescribed. Or at least not with the solutions offered to reach the result. As you noted, frameworks like Teal or Holacracy offer solutions for getting to the desired outcome. But maybe those solutions aren’t the right ones for the organization’s context, altough the desired outcome might be the same.
Fully agree re each intervention reshaping the system
I don't think even vast experience and a top notch hypothesis can be a match for complexities inherent unpredictability though. Complex systems can only be fully understood in retrospect.
Not always re the context not wanting the intervention, although sometimes it was only really the boss who was really up for it.
Be good to have call and a chat/intro when I'm back. Appreciating your comments 🙏
What I meant was the feeling of being unable to do something. Just because it's a complex system doesn't mean that you can't influence it. Even if the solution or response is not as linear as many would hope it to be....
I literally drop everything and read each chapter the minute it hits my feed/inbox. I see so much of my career and my choices in your writing. My neck hurts from nodding.
Interesting viewpoint on LinkedIn as the ‘unnoticed’ spreader of linear thinking. I always considered LinkedIn to be pretty harmless, esp compared to other socials, but your argument makes me rethink much of the content I absorbed over the years. I’ve read all your chapters so far and they wonderfully clarify much of my confusion that built up over the years. Looking forward to chapters to come!
Fully agree re each intervention reshaping the system
I don't think even vast experience and a top notch hypothesis can be a match for complexities inherent unpredictability though. Complex systems can only be fully understood in retrospect.
Not always re the context not wanting the intervention, although sometimes it was only really the boss who was really up for it.
Be good to have call and a chat/intro when I'm back. Appreciating your comments 🙏
Ah yes, I certainly recognise much of the paradigm and behaviour you describe in much of your writing. Not just from myself, but from those that I have collaborated with, and those I have learned from. I also recognise:
" Their worldview was locked in. They’d built careers on linear thinking, identities invested in it"
Quite true. And that is perhaps the key behind why the civil service cannot change. It is also why organisations die, because their senior decision-makers cannot shift, where the start-ups can.
In my work and of those I am connected to, I can only do my work when those decision-makers can and wish to shift their thinking, or mindset. So, actually I tell people I do is to 'redesign services' or 'systemic service designer'. But I dont actually do that, what I do is to help those that wish to, to expand their boundaries of what they understand, and are wanting to learn a new paradigm of how to design, and manage people in what we call an organisation.
Mark, I find this a well thought out and balanced piece, thats really helpful.
Thanks John, good to hear you find it helpful 🙏
It depends on what type of consulting we‘re talking about, or, more precisely maybe, about the attitude we take as a consultant. If you sell a „done-for you“ approach, you‘re trying to implement a solution, which, although many will claim otherwise, is mostly off-the-shelf. These solutions scale well and, as they are highly standardized, you don‘t need that much experience. Another approach and attitude to consulting is to not focus on the solution as such, but on the process to get to a solution. In this type of consulting, you‘re promising and selling to help the company co-create its own solution. This approach can also be standardized to a certain degree. Diagnosis (a real one), forming hypotheses about what‘s going on, designing interventions to make progress, followed by implementing these, and then evaluating again whether the intended result was achieved or not, which serves as the input for the next iteration of interventions. This approach is also standardized to a certain degree, it can scale, although it does less so with unexperienced consultants.
Thanks Marc, this is the version I spent years selling. The niggle I kept hitting was the sequence itself, diagnose, form hypotheses, design interventions, evaluate. It assumes the system holds still long enough to be diagnosed and responds predictably enough to be intervened in. Complex systems do neither. Curious how you handle it when the intervention reshapes the thing you were trying to diagnose? It's where I started to wonder/realise I was redecorating the linear paradigm rather than accepting complexity.
The evaluation happens after every single intervention. The intervention will of course reshape the system, and that’s the purpose. The diagnosis itself is already an intervention that reshapes the system. Simply announcing that a consultant is coming is an intervention, and sometimes that alone is enough to move the system in the desired direction.
Whether the system responds as predicted depends on the quality of the hypothesis, the match of the designed intervention, and how well it’s carried out. That’s the bit that doesn’t scale well, since it requires a lot of experience.
I absolutely agree there’s no guarantee an intervention will have the intended effect. But it will certainly have some kind of impact, because it disturbs the system, unless it’s used to that particular kind of intervention. What the system does with that is another matter. With experience, you get better at picking the right intervention for the intended outcome, given the actual context. Of course, you‘ll need to stay open and not always default to your standard intervention, which might have worked elsewhere. (You can of course do that, and then see whether your hypothesis was correct.)
What you described in earlier articles was a context that didn’t really seem to want what you prescribed. Or at least not with the solutions offered to reach the result. As you noted, frameworks like Teal or Holacracy offer solutions for getting to the desired outcome. But maybe those solutions aren’t the right ones for the organization’s context, altough the desired outcome might be the same.
Fully agree re each intervention reshaping the system
I don't think even vast experience and a top notch hypothesis can be a match for complexities inherent unpredictability though. Complex systems can only be fully understood in retrospect.
Not always re the context not wanting the intervention, although sometimes it was only really the boss who was really up for it.
Be good to have call and a chat/intro when I'm back. Appreciating your comments 🙏
I can relate to the sentiment. Then again, as leaders, managers, consultants,... we gotta do something, no? Happy holidays/travels.
Thanks! Is it a sentiment, or an unassailable fact of the nature of complex systems?
Beyond helping leaders understand the nature of the system they're working with, I'm really not sure what we can do that's of utility 🫣
Plenty will disagree, though I await their proof..
What I meant was the feeling of being unable to do something. Just because it's a complex system doesn't mean that you can't influence it. Even if the solution or response is not as linear as many would hope it to be....
I literally drop everything and read each chapter the minute it hits my feed/inbox. I see so much of my career and my choices in your writing. My neck hurts from nodding.
Love that, thank you Glenn! 🙏
Interesting viewpoint on LinkedIn as the ‘unnoticed’ spreader of linear thinking. I always considered LinkedIn to be pretty harmless, esp compared to other socials, but your argument makes me rethink much of the content I absorbed over the years. I’ve read all your chapters so far and they wonderfully clarify much of my confusion that built up over the years. Looking forward to chapters to come!
Thanks Arno, happy to hear they're helping clarify 😊
Excellent piece - shared and restacked.
Thanks!
Thanks Tim, much appreciated 🙏
This is worth every word. In gold. Read it, then read it again.
Thanks Sunil, I appreciate your support and the share 🙏
Fully agree re each intervention reshaping the system
I don't think even vast experience and a top notch hypothesis can be a match for complexities inherent unpredictability though. Complex systems can only be fully understood in retrospect.
Not always re the context not wanting the intervention, although sometimes it was only really the boss who was really up for it.
Be good to have call and a chat/intro when I'm back. Appreciating your comments 🙏