Preserving the problem

'Lamentably, business remains grounded in a slow-to-change mid-twentieth century 'scientific management' zeitgeist. What we have learned from the sciences since then - emergence and complexity, network science, and behavioural economics readily come to mind - has only made the slightest dent in how businesses are run.

The fact is, despite what we have learned in the last 100 years about the world and human nature, businesses are organised around the premises and principles that are, at best, arbitrary vestiges of bronze-age hierarchies, and, at the worst, mechanisms intended to coerce and control the majority for the benefit of the few.

As Clay Shirky once wrote, institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.'

Stowe Boyd

I think this quote is such a beautiful summary of my own thinking and indirectly, the overall theme of this blog over the past six years. 

A recent family bereavement and some time away have found me reflecting more deeply than ever about my writing here its reoccurring messages. 

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