SYNNECTA Blog
VUCA
Agile leadership: factors of success
The last years have seen radical change to the environment in which businesses have had to operate for success. The field is increasingly grasped by VUCA – volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Digitalization, globalization and growth of networking...
Agile Teams & Collaboration/Conflicts
Does »Agility« and »Controlling« fit together? On the ICV ControllingBlog Hans-Peter Sander, Head of the ICV Team PR/New Media, tells about his Agile Culture Coach training that he completed in five modules in 2017 at SYNNECTA. Today: »Agile Teams and Collaboration«...
Agile Methods and Scrum
Does »Agility« and »Controlling« fit together? The big Munich »Controller Congress« had the title »Agile Controlling in the digital reality – managing upheavals successfully?«. I received a fantastic offer: Deep immersion into the subject during a professional...
»The tale of one who set out to learn agility«
»Agility« and »management control« – that's a match! Even this year's large Munich »Controller Congress« agreed when they titled the event »Agile controlling in digital reality: Managing upheavals successfully«, didn't they? Or is it not a match after all, as some...
SYNNECTA Werkhaus – Introduction
Looking up at a starry sky, we might have a sense of sublime peace and magnitude or hear the music of the spheres. They are ways to look or hear into the sky; images we create for ourselves. Heinrich Hertz, as a hardcore natural scientist, noted that we create images...
Dimensions of Agility
»Agility« has become a key term for anyone keen to show that they are »ahead of the times«. Yet, at the same time, use of the word often elicits negative reactions and rejection. Beyond showmanship and buzzword bingo, however, the term hides valuable notions and...
Irreparability in Business: Doing your best without being perfect
How you are, how the world is – this is the irreparable. (Giorgio Agamben) In his small, but philosophically very dense booklet The Coming Community, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (also see the German blog entry on state of emergency) elevated the irreparable to...
Out of the precarious moment into an uncertain future: Successful effectuation in VUCA situations
The differences between an Indian slum, a Brazilian favela and the banking district in Frankfurt, between a discriminated Roma group and a company department, between a family on benefits and the boardroom members of a DAX enterprise are apparent: poverty v. wealth,...
Both agile and lean – ambidextrous but not Janus-faced!
Applying what is proven and exploring what is new. (SYNNECTA's long-standing claim) Ambidextrous organization: this term was coined by Robert Duncan in the 1970s and picked up by James March in the 1990s and more recently by several other authors to describe a core...
New Leadership for a New World – A diagnostics instrument on the issue of VUCA
Follow-ups The leadership situation of today and tomorrow is characterized by planning ambiguities, the demand for faster adaptation and abrupt strategy alterations. VUCA is the term that was coined to describe this situation. Is your organization prepared for it?...
AIKIDO Leadership
Some time ago, I presented six basic stances for a new kind of sovereignty in organizations on this blog: VUCA-AIKIDO. These stances outline an AIKIDO mindset that can enable employees to face VUCA situations in organizations with greater confidence and to retain...
Meaningful Clarity: A plea for narration as a management tool (Handling VUCA VI)
The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time. (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland) Our modern, enlightened world no longer has a place for myths – they have been displaced by facts. Myths are generally ostracised as »false consciousness« and an...
VUCA-AIKIDO: Six stances for new sovereignty in business (Handling VUCA V)
If your heart is large enough to embrace your adversaries, you can see right through them and avoid their attacks (Ueshiba Morihei, Founder of Aikido) In previous contributions to the series »Handling VUCA«, I sketched out what VUCA means to then go on to present...
The Many as Many: the potential of multitude for businesses (Handling VUCA IV)
This blog has looked at VUCA in the business world from a strategic and an organizational point of view; VUCA also influences team work in business. The high degree of complexity in globalized organizations is causing an increasing dissolution of the units necessary...
Growing organism v. rigid machine: VUCA resilient organizations (Handling VUCA III)
Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant! (...) Don't be one of multiple, be multiplicities! (...) Be quick, even while standing still! (...) Don't bring out the General in you! The psychiatrist Félix Guattari and the philosopher Gilles Deleuze formed this imperative in...
Letting it run without letting go: Strategies in the world of VUCA (Handling VUCA II)
The wisest warrior need not ever battle. (Sun Tzu) When we accompany international project or team work we often encounter a European image of China that is rather unflattering to our Asian project partner. This image depicts the Chinese as unpredictable, imprecise...
New Blog Series: Handling VUCA
There is a new acronym creeping into discussions on contemporary organization and personnel development: VUCA. This acronym has its roots in military history: It became a keyword that was used from the mid-1990s onwards in US-American elite military academies in order...