The Confused CEO's Guide to 21st Century Organisations

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Have you ever struggled to understand - or explain to others - what buzzwords like “agile”, “lean” or “design thinking” actually mean? Or what seemingly simple concepts like organisational culture or innovation actually entail?

Well, struggle no more. This collection of tongue in cheek cartoon explanations will help you understand the core concept and easily explain it to your colleagues, clients, employees, boss or your estranged spouse who still doesn’t understand what you do for a living.

You can download the explanations as PowerPoint files and individual cartoons for your own use.

Your guide is a CEO of a shipping company who shares how he, slowly and painfully, understands what makes a 21st century organisation different from a tayloristic, 20th century factory he has modelled his business after. Hilarity ensues.

These explanations tap into new (or some very old) ways of thinking about organisations and human beings. We are currently standing very close to a paradigm shift - in fact some of us are already waist deep in it - that will challenge our ideas about how organisations should be run and even what constitutes an organisation. We are for example slowly letting go of the idea of the Rational Man and realising that we humans do pretty stupid stuff. And some people have even realised that organisations don’t quite fit into the machine metaphor management theories have tried to squash them into.

The book is suitable for management consultants, senior managers, intrapreneurs and children of all ages who display an interest in organisational development.