Anchovy, shark or octopus: Swimming the Future of Management

www.Orchestrated-Knowledge.com

Peter Leeson
Info@PLeeson.co.uk

Anchovy, Shark or Octopus:
Swimming the Future of
Management
Anchovy, Shark and Octopus
Peter Leeson, info@pleeson.co.uk

Evolving Work Practices
The Basics of Engineering
5

The Basic Approach
6
1. Envision
2. Plan 3. Work

The Managed Approach
7
1. Envision
2. Plan
4. Measure
3. Work

The Learning Approach
8
1. Envision
2. Plan
5. Improve 4. Measure
3. Work

The Risk Aware Approach
9
1. Envision 6. Discover
2. Plan
3. Work
(shhhh… it happens)

The Mature Approach
10
2. Plan
3. Work

Four Areas of Knowledge
11
2. Plan
3. Work

Four Areas of Intelligence
12
1 6
2
5 4
3

Four Areas of the Human Brain
13
Limbic Cerebral
Left Brain
Right Brain

Me
Ego
Spirit
Soul
Self
Using Intelligence
14
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that
space is our power to choose our response. In our
response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor E Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”

Using Intelligence
15
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that
space is our power to choose our response. In our
response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor E Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”
Me
Ego
Spirit
Soul
Self

Motivation
16
Reflective Reactive
Rational
Responsive

Motivating
17
Reflective Reactive
Rational
Responsive
Ability
Attitude
Acceptance
Aspiration

Your role is not to manage
Your role is certainly not to bully
Your role is not to dictate how to do things
Your role is not even to motivate
Your Role is to satisfy the innate desire people have to
take pride in the value of their work
18
Your Role As A Manager

Understanding Management
The Basics of Management Practice
20

The role of a manager is to provide the resources necessary to allow the
team to produce their best:
Time
Budget
Staffing
Knowledge
Tools and equipment
Structure and organization
Protection from external interference
Clear and realistic objectives
Support
Etc.
You’re a good manager if your team is effective
21
Management’s Role

Mechanistic Systemic
22
Two Basic Approaches

People are interchangeable
A task is a task
Command and control
Assume everyone is out to cheat the company
Measure and give measured objectives
Well defined hierarchical structure
Formalise and standardise
We need to see everyone in an Open-Plan Office
23
Mechanistic Approach

Open-Plan Office
24
Charlie Chaplin
“Modern Times”
https://www.officeprofile.co.uk/blog/should-i-have-an-open-plan-office-layout/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23419229

Understanding Business
A fishy choice
25

The Anchovy Business
The Anchovy is small, fast and
agile
It can swim fast, do its own
thing, change directions
extremely rapidly
It can decide to be
independent or join a school
They must group into schools
for protection against
predators if they want to
survive
26
YouTube Film Extracts: “Anchovies Swimming” and “Amazing Fish Form Giant Ball to Scare Predators” (BBC Blue Planet)

The Shark Business
Sharks are large and powerful
Feared rulers of their kingdom
They are slow and inflexible
They must continue moving
forward 24/7 to survive
Usually solitary, only one type
of shark hunts as a group
27
YouTube Film Extracts: “Diving with the Great White Shark”

www.Orchestrated-Knowledge.com Anchovy, Shark and Octopus
28
The Black-Tip Shark
YouTube Film Extracts: “Black Tip Shark vs 10 million Anchovies “

29
The Octopus
YouTube Film Extracts: “The Insane Biology of the Octopus”

Most Organizations End Up As…
30

Most Organizations End Up As…
31

32
It’s Time to Change That!

Promotion replaces performance as the measure of personal
success
Valuable engineers are promoted to inefficient managers
People learn to obey the rules instead of implementing the needs
of the business
The effort to reduce the cost of development is countered by the
cost of the overhead
Compliance to average is important; trying something new to
improve is discouraged
33
Why?

Whole Brain Engineering and Management
34
2. Plan
3. Work

The Basic Approach
35
1. Envision
2. Plan 3. Work

The Idiot’s Approach
36
3. Work

The Managed Approach
37
1. Envision
2. Plan
Measure
3. Work
4.

4.
1. Envision
2. Plan 3. Work Delivery
Project
What to Measure, how to measure?
Taylor’s “Scientific Management” stresses the need to measure
Management focus on easy to measure:
Time
Cost
Ignores the things that are difficult to measure:
Quality
Innovation
Improvement
38
Measure

Using Control Charts
39

The Bell-Curve Tyranny
40
Pictures by Unknown Authors are licensed under CC BY-SA

41
Don’t think
Don’t change anything
Follow every step to
the letter
Stay in the bell-curve
If you do every step
as told, you will
deliver what was
requested
You were hired
because you were
intelligent, you are
not paid to be
intelligent
Procedural Death by Compliance

No inner life
No empathy
No understanding
of life
42
Zombingineers
http://ilovegamereviews.blogspot.com/2013/05/resident-evil-revelations-tips-and.html

Flat structures
Shifting boundaries: the organization is a living system
People are considered as assets rather than resources
Deal with complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity
Does not rely on formalized structures
Organizational structures coalesce for specific projects
Symbiotic relationships
46
Systemic Management
https://aipractitioner.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Teambuilding-Dialogue.jpg

47
That Means Empowering Teams
https://3kcz333h8wih3px3rh3vhfv3-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/tameday-team-collaboration-800x533-1.jpg

Strategy
and
Finance
48
You want to be an octopus!

Cell-Based Organization
49
Strategy
and
Finance
Support
Planning and
Resources
Office
Management
Project
Support
Project Cells
Service Cells
Key
Customer
Cell
New Business
Development
Showroom
Innovation
Coaching
Recruitment
Conflict
Transformation
QA and
Improvement

A group of people working together
Meeting on an ongoing basis
Solving their own problems
Making their own decisions
Membership based on interest
Rotating membership
Focus on solving issues and organizing work
50
What is a Cell?

Organization
The Organization as an Organism
51
Strategic Technology
Human /
Cultural
Structural
Managerial
Cost:
• Human
• Financial
• Technological
• Material
• Resources
Value:
• Products
• Services
Input-Output:
Flow of materials, energy,
information

People and Teams
Roles
Responsibilities
Authority
Career Plan
Training
Objectives
52

53

54
If You Doubt…
YouTube Film Extracts: “Squids & Octopuses - Mysterious Hunters of the Deep Sea - Free Documentary Nature”

55
If You Still Doubt…
YouTube Film Extracts: “Octopus Kills Shark - National Geographic”

56

Understanding Leadership
The things that are important
57

Communicate
With the team
With each team member
With other stakeholders (management, clients, suppliers, other project managers)
Leadership by example
Conflict resolution, team development, mentoring
Negotiation
Trouble-shooting
Estimating, planning and bidding
Matching external competitive drivers and internal capabilities
Monitoring and Tracking
58
The Skills of a Manager

Adjustment
Calm under pressure
Stress levels under control
Don’t worry, think
When everything falls apart or
changes
Take a deep breath
Examine the causes and
consequences
Decide how to proceed
It’s not a problem, it’s a
challenge
“Peace of mind isn't at all
superficial, really. It’s the whole
thing.”
60

Ambiguity Management
Learn to deal with complex and
contradictory information to
achieve the best result
61
https://legal-planet.org/tag/regulatory-prolicy-2/

Change Management
In the ecosystem of your work,
disruption is continuous and
increasingly fast
Management needs to
understand how to smooth the
change on a continuous basis
62
Every Change is a Risk
If you don’t manage it, it will grow
into a problem

Six Roles
Initiator
Inviter
Space Creator
Gate Keeper
Connector
Co-Participator
Four Positions
In the Spotlight
With the team
On the balcony
Alone
63
Collaboration
http://hostleadership.com/resources

64
Compassion

Conflict Transformation
Don’t just react to events
Find out what is really
happening
Find out how it happened
Find out why it is happening
Examine your thinking
65

Curiosity
Find out what you don’t know
Find out why you didn’t know it
66
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2017/10/a-fundamental-problem-with-moral-enhancement/

Ethics
67
Business
Professional
Personal
Go to the meeting or the funeral?
Nobody checks my
expenses in any case
If he knew I vote socialist, would
it damage my career?
This is a great
tax-avoidance scheme
Should I tell my boss that
she’s wrong about this?
Cheaper people to
increase the profit?
Bid low, we can
increase the fees
when we have won?
Adapted from “How to Practice Safe Consulting”
Simon Wallace 09 June 2020 - Used with Permission

Intelligence
68
Logic
Understanding
Self-awareness
Learning
Emotional knowledge
Reasoning
Planning
Creativity
Critical thinking
Problem-solving
https://davidbent.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/we-should-all-embrace-embracing-complexity/

Knowledge
Understand what is important
Know what you know
Know what your team knows
Know who knows what they
need to know
69
https://www.lanternaeducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Senses-e1583502391711.jpgr

Motivation
The first responsibility is to
ensure that your team
members want to complete
and deliver their work
according to the established
constraints (quality, schedule,
budget)
Reward attitude, behaviour and
outcomes rather than
attendance
70
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oUL3l10_JMA/Ty6UvOmeXyI/AAAAAAAAD5I/Wm9qFqtGkFs/s1600/whip.jpg

Mutual Trust
Your team members need to
be able to trust you; for this:
You need to trust them
Stay consistent in your actions
and words
71
Vitruvian Quality
©2020 Peter Leeson

Psychology
We are all unique combinations
of experiences, DNA and ancestry,
education, studies, lessons learnt,
and more
Respect the uniqueness of each
individual
Check your colleagues for
depression, anxiety and other
mental health difficulties
Listen, respond, adapt, adopt
72
and Self-Awareness

Risk Awareness
Actively seek out risks and
issues
Work on the future –
tomorrow’s problems are
today’s risks
Plan for risks and future states
73
Operational Risks
Programme Risks
Strategic Risks

Sociology
Wisdom is the innate knowledge
you have that allows you to react
correctly to unforeseen events
A group’s culture is the sum of its
wisdom
Work within the culture
The people you have
The way of working you have
The processes you have
Listen to your team’s experience,
desires, complaints, suggestions!
74

What is important for you
Respect team members’ families
Understand the importance of communities
Reach out to those with difficulties
Educate and train your colleagues to find new positions if/when
necessary
75
Values
https://matrixti.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Core-Values.jpg

Understanding Complexity
It’s never really that simple, is it?
76

Complex means difficult to understand by people of average
intelligence
Simple means easy to understand by people of average
intelligence
 We are biologically programmed to prefer simple,
 but we often overdo it
Simplistic means too simple
e.g., trying to apply a known easy solution to a new, complex problem
Simplistic sells
i.e., widely-accepted often means too-simple
77
Understanding Complexity

People are complex
Random reactions are not traceable back to causes
Tools are complicated
Many parameters and constraints need to work together
Theories are simple
Academics and self-help books have ready solutions for problems they
don’t know about
Organizations are chaotic
Many people seek to apply different simple theories to solve complicated
problems
Many people applying simplistic solutions to complicated problems
78
Applying Complexity

Complexity Assessment
79
Environmental Complexity
Expectations
Stability

Before you can move on, you need to understand your current
position
Then define where you would like to be
Then decide how to start moving in the right direction
Resist the urge of taking the “obvious, easy solution”
Analyse rationally before jumping
80
Start Where You Are
Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework
www.Cognitive-Edge.com

System thinking starts from an ideal situation and decides what
needs to be done
It fails because the idealism is too far
Complexity thinking starts from the current state and starting a
journey with a sense of direction but without overstating the goals
We can discover things along the way
Value the Cynics – they challenge you
81
Adapt your Thinking to the Issue

They challenge you
People prefer questions over impositions
Ask them more simple questions
How would you simplify this?
How could we avoid that difficulty?
When do you think we could start?
Listen, respond, adapt, adopt
82
Cynics
Include the cynics in
defining
designing
developing
deploying

Conclusions
Understanding this Presentation
83

Be a Full-Brain Organisation
84
2. Plan
3. Work

Recruitment
Strategy
and
Finance
Support
Planning and
Resources
Office
Management
Project
Support
Project Cells
Service Cells
Key
Customer
Cell
New Business
Development
Showroom
Innovation
Coaching
Conflict
Transformation
QA and
Improvement
Be An Octopus Organisation
85
85

Recruitment
Be A Sharing Organisation
86
Strategy
and
Finance
Support
Planning and
Resources
Office
Management
Project
Support
Project Cells
Service Cells
Key
Customer
Cell
New Business
Development
Showroom
Innovation
Coaching
Conflict
Transformation
QA and
Improvement

Be An Effective Organisation
87

Satisfy the innate desire people have to take pride in the value of
their work
88
Be A Proud Organisation

Be A Wise Organisation
89
Data
Numbers and
Words
representing
objects, events
and properties
Information
Contained in
answers to
questions of who,
what, where,
when and how
many: it is
processed data
Knowledge
Contained in
instructions,
know-how. You
might think of it
as organized
information
Understanding
Contained in
answers to why
questions
Wisdom
Being able to
recognise and
judge long-term
possible
consequences
Prediction

Be A Coherent Organisation
Every worker needs to believe
in your organizational mission
Every worker needs to believe
that their daily activities
forward the organizational
mission
Every worker needs to take
pride in their work and the
results of your organization
90
©Peter Leeson 2019,
all rights reserved
Get your docs in a row!

91
Any Questions?

Peter Leeson
Orchestrated Knowledge
Tel. +44 12 13 646 999
Email: Info@pleeson.co.uk
@PeterLeeson
Let’s Talk…
93
Contact
https://bit.ly/OK-LetsTalk
www.Orchestrated-Knowledge.com

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