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Think Pieces
How big is the reading pile on your desk or in your in-box? When do you get the time to read new ideas and re-fresh your thinking? I bet the vast majority of your time is driven by a remorseless wave of business-imposed activity. You most probably take the essential reading home for the week-end. You know your organisation needs fresh thinking and ideas. But where do you get them…once a year at Conference?
Thanks to one of our Associate Consultants, Roger Greene, Tricordant is now able to provide these fresh ideas and refreshers within our Tricord newsletter and by monthly email. The rules: This monthly featurette, must only take 5-minutes to read and must provide some fresh ideas and thinking on various issues including, leadership, change management, organisation design, communications etc. So breath deep, relax and read on…
Starfish & Spiders (4): The Starfish Enterprise (September 2008)
The final article in the Starfish and Spider series by Roger Greene answers the question, "All the concepts in the Starfish and Spiders book by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom are great but how do I implement them in my very real organisation?" Roger introduces an approach based on a concept called the Tricord which is allied to the ideas discussed in Brafman’s and Beckstrom’s book. The key insight of the approach is organising people into “whole work” teams as the building blocks of successful organisations. By building their companies systems and subsystems into "whole work" teams, leaders will release creativity, initiative and ongoing learning into their organisations.
 Read the full article
Starfish & Spiders (3) (August 2008)
In the third article reviewing the book titled Starfish and Spiders by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom the “sweet spot” on the centralization-decentralisation continuum is further explored. Paying homage to Peter Drucker, who also saw ideology and decentralisation as keys to success, they explain that although GM had been the world's number one car manufacturer since 1931 through empowerment of its divisions, Toyota continually strives to find the ideal balance between starfish and spider systems and has over taken GM. e-bay and Apple are another two companies which the article explains have become market leaders by finding their “sweet spots”, even though they weren’t the first to market. The article concludes with a warning that although Apple, e-Bay and Toyota may be sitting on the sweet spot today, there's no guarantee the sweet-spot won't shift tomorrow.
Read the full article
Starfish & Spiders (2) (August 2008)
This article further explores the themes and ideas in the book titled Starfish and Spiders by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom about centralization versus decentralization. With the internet being all pervasive resulting in enduring Starfish business models, the key question is how to lead it? Using examples of Alcoholics Anonymous, a purely Starfish model, and remembering the Nant'an of the Apache Indians the article highlights ideology as the glue that holds decentralized organisations together. As described by Ori & Rod this is one of the 5 key characteristics of successful decentralised organisations. But how is this balanced against the pressures of the audit committee or the shareholder AGM? Enter the hybrid organisation. GE appears to be a successful centralised organisation, however since 1981 Jack Welch has taken the company to a new level through strategy and decentralization, moving from $12bn in 1981 to $375bn 25 years later. In other words Jack Welch found the “sweet spot” on the leadership continuum. Similarly Ori & Rod see the “sweet spot” on the centralization-decentralisation continuum as the Holy Grail for companies in the internet age.
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Starfish & Spiders (1) (August 2008)
This article reviews some the ideas in the book of the same title by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom. The book is about the time-honoured struggle between centralisation and decentralisation. Command & control versus empowerment & delegation of authority. Its quest is to find the "sweet spot" on the spectrum between the two. Referring to both recent court battles between P2P file sharing websites and the music industry and historic battles between the Spanish and the various tribes of South and Central America the article seeks to understand this struggle and the impact of the internet. You only have to think of Al Qaeda, or the underground Christian Church in China, to know the impact that these types of organisations have on today's world and today’s business leaders.
Read the full article
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