I’m a firm believer that for many reasons the current management systems (that still based on principles formed 100 ago) are not a fit anymore to the complexity (unexpected) environments (internally and externally) that businesses are operating in. I believe that the current management systems are detractors for business survival and success and the fact that lifespan of companies shrank and the percentage of companies that didn’t drop from the fortune 500 (which is one digit number now) are the symptom of the management crisis we all experiencing.
I’m also a firm believer that the chaos theory and complex adaptive system are great resources to explore and understand how systems are working for many long years. I’m sure (based on my experience) that adapting concepts from those two sciences into a new management system will create a management system that can survive and thrive in the evergrowing complex world.
When I started my journey with #NoHierarchy / non-deterministic management system, I took the more radical approach, and I tried to replace the current management system with a new non-hierarchial management system. Over time I learned that every management system has its place and it is better to increase your management toolset by having more tools, rather than throw the old tools and using just the new ones.
I’m still convinced that management systems that can better deal with complexity are a better fit and as a result will be more used in companies. From my own point of view, they will form the structure and modus of operation of companies. The current linear and deterministic management system still have a place when you have to deal with non-complex environments and situation.
Businesses (as any other systems) are swinging all the time between chaos and order. They grow and develop by going through continuous cycles of conflicts between chaos and order which continuously increase their complexity (working on an article to explain this behavior). When you find yourself as a business swinging too much into chaos, you want to use more linear and deterministic approaches. Obviously, you want to use more non-deterministic and non-linear management systems when you swing into order.
In a nutshell, based on my experience I encourage everyone to learn and adopt new management systems that are based on principles of chaos theory and complex adaptive system but to build this new tools on top of the existing ones.