Mismatched / Misaligned

"All change must start in the heads and thinking of managers. Unfortunately, this is unusual. Systems thinking is necessary. Unfortunately, silo thinking and suboptimisation are still the norm."

Jan Jensrud

Most leaders view their organisation in the 'technical' paradigm. Put simply, their business is a set of processes and structures (however poorly defined) which can be improved by 'fixing' or 'changing' in some way. 

In this model, leaders are (inevitably) assumed to be the 'experts' and so the focus of the work beneath them is on executing their plans.

Organisational development initiatives are (inevitably) approached in the same way. This breeds the default diet of centralised programmes, a focus on individuals, compliance, 'topics' (AKA 'skills'), content creation, and 'success' measured through activity (course completions) and reaction ('smile sheets').

First fact: The choice of management model determines the performance of the organisation.

So the reason why every annual L&D conference agenda still includes 'creating learning culture', 'improving leadership', 'releasing the potential of diversity', 'reducing formal learning' is because these are adaptive, systemic, approaches - that are mismatched and misaligned to the typical 'technical' management model.

Second fact: Adaptive and systemic approaches won't work in traditional 'technical' management models. 


I work as a thinking partner and advisor with mid sized, value oriented companies going through significant change. I help you to build new capability and mindsets through shifting your approach to organisational development.

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