When faced with a problem, how often do teams within your organization become polarized around proposed solutions that are opposites? For example, one group…

Organizations today suffer from a severe disability when it comes to solving problems. In virtually every organization, regardless of mission and function, people are…

Many leaders feel starved for time. Working under the assumption that longer hours lead to improved productivity, they drive themselves and others to increase…

The most successful organizations understand that the purpose of any business is to create value for customers, employees, and investors, and that the interests…

Why are attempts to transform organizations usually painful and so often unsuccessful? Why is it that, even when leaders recognize the value of the…

What makes a great collaboration? One view is that a collaboration is only as great as the individuals who collaborate within it. Another is…

The drive toward improvement has become a way of life in corporations today. Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering, and other improvement techniques have…

Systems thinking can be thought of as a language for communicating about complexity and interdependencies (see “Systems Thinking as a Language,” Viewpoint, April 1991). To…

During the mid-1980s, a large high-technology company launched a project to begin thinking more systemically about strategy. “COPEX” (a fictional name) designed, manufactured, sold,…

Margaret Wheatley describes vision not just as a destination but as a field that permeates the organization, affecting all employees who bump against it.