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A system is a collection of elements that interact to produce an effect that cannot be produced by any subset of the elements. This interesting definition of what is a system guides Haeckel to define the synergy (the glue between the elements): Defining synergy as a result that is "more than the sum of the parts" is closer to the mark. This definition, for example, is what the corporate office of the General Electric Company (GE) achieves by lowering the cost of doing business for its subsidiaries. Because they are part of GE's portfolio, the subsidiaries benefit from the economies of scope that come from sharing the GE logo: GE's AAA investment rating, GE's worldwide telecommunications network, and GE's 'boundaryless' knowledge, to name some of the assets that are shared accross units. The result is that the units are more profitable as part of GE than they would be as separate entities, which means that GE's revenue and profit are more than the s

What is interesting in Haeckel his article is the final conclusion he makes about sports and business: Moreover, agility - the ability to change directions rapidly - is not enough. The change must be appropriate to the situation, which is why an ability to size up the current situation earlier is fundamental to adaptiveness. How many managerial proponents of velocity, agility, and speed to market understand this distinction? In the next post, we will analyze what systemic answers and business design principles can be - and what's the relation with KM concepts.

These sports analogies capture an important insight for business leaders - the people who are responsible for creating the enterprise playbook and keeping everyone in the business on the same page. Having an employee like Marshall Faulk is a great advantage only if the business design leverages his skills. Knowing earlier without the ability and opportunity to act on that knowledge produces frustration, not success. [...] Moreover, agility - the ability to change directions rapidly - is not enough. The change must be appropriate to the situation, which is why an ability to size up the current situation earlier is fundamental to adaptiveness. How many managerial proponents of velocity, agility, and speed to market understand this distinction? Haeckel, IBM Systems journal, vol.42, n°3, 2003.

What's interesting to analyze is to see how a football pro learns: "He also knows, from hours and hours of watching miles of game tapes, the patterns and proclivities of defensive players. At a higher level, because of his pattern-recognizing ability to rapidly size up the implications of a given game situation, Faulk knows something much more important: he knows earlier than anyone else on the field the meaning of what is happening now. That is what enables him to play faster, rather than run faster."

Just to continue the comparison between sport reflexes and intellectual reasoning, let's read further Haecke's article. He continues to argue that patterns recognition is the secret of sport champions, extending the concept to business executives. "In business terms, Marshall Faulk is an excellent sense-and-respond decision-maker. His decisions are not analytical, or 'data driven', even though he spends an extraordinary amount of time studying films to extract the tendencies of opposing teams and coaches - what they are likely to do under a variety of game situations. As he watches the films, he is looking for and internalizing patterns. When he is given the ball, it is his pattern recognition capability, not his reasoning skill, that enables him to anticipate and respond to what is happening on the field. The patterns he recognizes are systems patterns, not activity sequences. The current relationships between the players, more than the current actions of them, in

I just read an article from the IBM systems Journal (Vol. 42, N°3, 2003) an article from S.H. Haeckel about the similarities between business executives and architects. The first remark I had is about the opposition between the know-how and the know-why. "[...] I don't just want to know what everybody has to do; I want to know why. When you know why, you know more...You play faster". This exceptional athlete [the quote is from Marshall Faulk, a US football player] was not talking about his know-how. He was talking about know-why. Know-how is procedural knowledge, which is action centered and based on practice, and Faulk has a super abundance of it. But it is know-why that distinguishes him from other talented athletes, enabling him to better anticipate what will happen next. He does this not by projecting historical trends, but by deriving meaning in real time from what is happening now. This meaning comes from an understanding of the context within which action takes pla

I had a light lunch with an old friend of mine I didn't see for more than 15 years. Of course, we had a lot to say, to tell about our families, jobs and all what had happened in our lifes. But a central question was about the nature of relations (between college friends) - why we were sitting in that specific restaurant, laughing about souvenirs and wondering why some others were a little bit reluctant on (re)taking contacts with a previous (old) community [our last grade class]. Interesting problem and a fantastic time spent together!

A lot of work to perform on our Microsoft CRM project. All the processes to streamline and all the links to establish between the info tables, a kind of nightmare... However, a good blog where I found valuable info: http://microsoftcrm3.blogspot.com/ .