Fire Fighting In the late noughties, Michelle Barton and Kathleen Sutcliffe carried out a study of wildfires in the US. They were interested in understanding how the firefighters went about managing complexity in their job. The researchers wanted to understand why some fires were well controlled and brought to a swift and happy conclusion, whilst […]
Reducing Complexity
Avoiding Overwhelm In their book Meltdown, Clearfield and Tilcsik show how complicated systems fail. They discuss nuclear accidents, financial disasters and medical mishaps and show how we can avoid disasters by reducing complexity. The more complex our systems become, the less easy they are to understand. So they become harder to fix when they break. Add […]
The Most Profitable Activity in the World
Collaboration The iPhone is — arguably — the most profitable product in the world. Since it was launched in 2007 it has sold over 700 million units. In my household alone we have 4 of the damned things. I hasten to add my daughter’s phones are hand-me downs, but all the same. The iPhone 11 […]
How to Turn a Supertanker
Leverage There is a management metaphor that changing the direction of an organisation is a bit like changing the direction of a supertanker. It can be done, but organisations are big, cumbersome and it takes a lot of time to push them onto another course. A flawed analogy It is a nice analogy, but a […]
Messy by Tim Harford — Book Review
What is it about? According to the author, Tim Harford, Messy “celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it’s important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead”. According to Maria Konnikova’s New York Times review, “a less catchy, but perhaps more accurate, title for the book would be […]
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