Susan was a trustee of Clean Break, a women only theatre company that works with women who have experienced the criminal justice system. With Dawn’s help, Susan worked with the then Chief Executive to create a mess map. Mapping out the issues and the stakeholders helped us to understand why we could not solve our…
Last time we talked about messy problems, those problems with high levels of task complexity, today we are talking about wicked problems. Wickedness isn’t a degree of difficulty. Wicked issues are different because traditional processes can’t resolve them …. A wicked problem has innumerable causes, is tough to describe, and doesn’t have a right answer……
Last week, we started this mini-series with some thoughts about tame problems – the ones you know how to solve. Today we are looking at the rather more challenging area of messy problems. Messes are puzzles, rather than solving them, we resolve their complexities…We are increasingly faced with problems of organized complexity, clusters of interrelated…
Well, that was quite a week, and I confess I am pretty tired today. I feel a bit guilty saying that because I am not a key worker, I am not on the front line, I am just adjusting to my own little bubble and trying to make some sense of all that is happening.…
We thought you might be interested in a few things that have attracted our attention recently. Our global experiment in home working This article in the FT – How is the home working experiment going? – caught my eye. There are lots of great ideas to try out and I liked the emphasis on experimentation…
Yesterday I introduced the idea of different types of problems and offered a way of thinking about problems in terms of their complexity. Today’s post is about the first of the problem types: tame problems. I have also included some thoughts on how to solve problems creatively and well. Tame problems: Known problems with known…
Problem solving is a major part of what Dawn and I do in our consulting lives. To solve a problem, you need to understand not just the context (who, what, when, where, why and how) but also what kind of problem you are dealing with because solving different types of problems requires different approaches. One…
Trust is ‘one party’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the belief that the latter party is competent, open, concerned and reliable.’ (Mishra, 1996: 265) Many of us have probably never experienced a situation where we have felt quite as vulnerable as we do right now. All aspects of our lives are…
Over the last couple of weeks many of you will have been involved in board discussions about decisions you would rather not take. In such circumstances, charities with boards of unpaid, part-time trustees face particular challenges. Trustees cannot know the organisation as well as the executive team and as such they will be dealing with…
Many organisations will be facing severe financial pressures at the moment, even after taking into account the recent announcements such as the Job Retention Scheme and the Emergency Funding packages from the Arts Council. Here are three questions to help you think about whether your current ways of working financially are up to the job.…
We’re giving Susan a short breather while I pick up some of the non-financial implications of what is happening at the moment. I don’t know about you, but it seems to take a lot of effort to think straight at the moment. I have talked to several people recently who have likened the feeling to…
Today’s post is aimed at giving you some really practical advice based on Susan’s in-depth experience of managing the all important cashflow. For many, too many, organisations the focus for the next few months will be on survival and that means CASH IS QUEEN! Your cashflow forecast is your most important financial tool and you…
Here’s the second set of pointers based on what Susan has learnt from her extensive experience of working with a wide range of organisations facing financial difficulties: Think in terms of options and scenarios rather than trying to find one solution and then implementing it, come what may. You need to be able to adapt…