November 2004: Project of the Month
A one hour online conversation with the RODEO team

Wednesday 3rd November
14:00 GMT, 15:00 CET, 9:00 USA East Time

Read the online event transcript here

The team have some questions for you:
Take part in our RODEO mini-survey

Introduction
Principles and definitions
Evaluation and and validation findings
RODEO/KM members coming to the event
Further documentation

Introduction

The Context:

It is the age of change. Most organisations are facing dramatic changes in their socio-economic landscape and operating environment. The changes are far reaching and global. They affect everyone, everywhere. Managers are now being challenged by the following questions:

• How do you track and make sense of the changes in order to survive and compete in such turbulent markets?


• How do you manage the transformations required?


• How do you grow the organisation and ensure its long-term sustainability?

The RODEO project will help organisations to answer these questions and to manage the challenges facing them for robust business development in turbulent times.

The Vision:

The RODEO project aims to built an integrated approach to business development, grounded in complexity theory, where the key focus is on achieving adaptability and robustness in turbulent environments. Business development is defined as the holistic and continuous process of developing and aligning products, services and market combinations with the organisation’s people ad competency sets.

The Mission:

To Provide solutions, methods and approaches to meet the business development needs for organizations in multi-enterprise situations operating in turbulence environments. The RODEO project will focus on three intertwined aspects of management disciplines: Strategy Formulation; Organisation Design and Performance Management.

The Results:

RODEO has delivered a business development toolkit with special emphasis on people and network of people. The toolkit will contribute to:

• More effective development of key competencies


• Better success in turning changes and risks into value-adding opportunities


• Increase organisational flexibility


• Better anticipation of and faster response to change

Principles and definitions

Complexity science based principals allowed us to develop a focus and process, that has in turn enabled us to choose, create and develop tools for business development:

The complexity science 6 principles the RODEO process is based on are the following.

1. Self-organisation and emergence

Not everything happens according to plan. In fact, says Guy Browning, Guardian columnist, "The Best way to plan is carefully to write everything down on a piece of paper and then to rip the paper to shreds." [Extract from 'How to Plan' by Guy Browning, in The Guardian Weekend, April 26, 2003, p10.]. “We live in an environment where a lot of things are happening all the time. People interact with each other... They interact with the patterns and processes of behaviour... in all these interactions, novelty is created, new things happen… We can call this ‘emergence’”[Extract from p169, in “The Leadership Dance”, by Richard, N. Knowles – 2002].

2. The edge of chaos

"The edge of chaos is a condition, not a location,” writes Pascale, “It is a permeable, intermediate state through which order and disorder flow... Moving to the edge of chaos creates upheaval but not dissolution. That's why the edge of chaos is so important. The edge is not the abyss. It's the sweet pot for productive change.” Pascale goes on to say: “Human beings aren't ants, and organizations aren't ant colonies. But when productive agitation runs high, innovation often thrives and startling breakthroughs can come about. This elusive much-sough-after sweet spot is sometimes called 'a burning platform'. The living sciences call it the edge of chaos.” [Extract taken from pages 61-65, of Pascale, R. T., Millemann, M., and Gioja, L. (2000), 'Surfing the Edge of Chaos'.]

3. Diversity

Diversity is the spice of life! "In ecosystems, the role of diversity is closely connected with the system's network structure… In other words, the more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be. In Ecosystems, the complexity of the network is a consequence of its biodiversity, and thus a diverse ecological community is a resilient community, capable of adapting to changing situations. However, diversity is a strategic advantage only if there is a truly vibrant community, sustained by a web of relationships. If the community is fragmented into isolated groups and individuals, diversity can easily become a source of prejudice and friction. But if the community is aware of the interdependence of all its members, diversity will enrich all the relationships and thus enrich the community as a whole, as well as each individual member. In such a community information and ideas flow freely through the entire network, and the diversity of interpretations and learning styles - even the diversity of mistakes - will enrich the entire community." [Extract from "The Web of Life", by Fritjof Capra, 1997, p295]

4. Historicity/Time

"Sometimes people at other companies think they should imitate what we're doing” said one leader. “The first thing I'd say is, 'Stop looking to us. We followed our path, it has to do with our history and our business." I Don't think we are a model for anybody, although I know there are companies who are using us as a model. If we'd had a model, I don't think we would have done as well as we have, because we might have felt constrained to do things in a certain way that didn't fit us. The most important thing is that this is an experiment, an experiment still in progress. ... Because we are in times of unprecedented change, unprecedented discontinuity, you need to keep enough flexibility so that if you face something surprising you can take advantage of it, or recoil from it, whatever is appropriate. I think, because of the way we work, we can do this a lot better than in the past. And my guess is that most organisations would know how to do all this too." [Extract taken from p222-3, chapter 12, 'Monsanto: Transformation of a Chemical Giant', in "Weaving Complexity & Business: Engaging the Soul at Work", by Roger Lewin and Birute Regine., 2000]

5. Unpredictability - the future

“The information revolution provides excellent examples... Some of the most famous stories of mistaken foresight centre on managers and board members at companies like IBM and Intel who were unable to grasp the world-changing potential of their own products… (New York Times, 1997). As Andrew Pollack said, "The gears of the digital revolution [are] turning faster than the wheels of justice" (Pollack, 1998). Some industry leaders were frank enough to say - two years after the deluge - that they saw the first effective Web browser, Mosaic, as an inconsequential toy (Norman, 1997). As we write, that experience of the unanticipated World Wide Web explosion is fresh in our memories. In the information revolution, there are clearly strong limits on our ability to foresee what is to come." [Extract taken from pages 11-12 of Axelrod, R, and Cohen, M. D. (1999), "Harnessing Complexity; Organisational Implications of a Scientific Frontier."]

6. Pattern recognition

Management theorist and consultant, Ralph Stacey explains, "Chaotic behaviour has an overall, qualitative pattern to it, within which specific outcomes are random … when behaviour is chaotic, there is an important distinction between a category and the individuals constituting it. The individuals are not all the same, they are only similar enough to warrant inclusion in the category. We can then talk about history repeating itself and yet always being different. To see how this relates to the world of business, consider how competitive advantage is built up in certain geographic locations. Common patterns, at a qualitative level, can be detected in the development of businesses around certain education institutions… We can recognize geographical patterns of economic development as we become involved in them, but we cannot predict how these patterns will evolve… the pattern that emerges depends on many escalating small events. The 'hidden' pattern is therefore the essential feature of the category." [Extract from p67-9, in "Managing Chaos", by R, D, Stacey, 1992.]

The acronym RODEO means "robust development of organisations in turbulent environments." But what is robustness and how can a turbulent business environment be defined?

Turbulent business environments

The well-known management guru, Peter Drucker, said: “The world economy will continue to be highly turbulent and highly competitive, prone to abrupt shifts ...” [Drucker, P.F. (1997) Managing in turbulent times. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann]. “How can a firm achieve “fit” between what it does and what its industry environment requires today, while also preparing itself to stretch capabilities and evolve its culture to tackle the new environment that tomorrow might bring? This has always been a challenge for firms, but the speed with which environments and markets change in today’s world makes this an even more pressing concern” [Cusumano, M.A. and Markides, C. C. (2001) Strategic Thinking for the Next Economy. MIT Sloan Management Review. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass]

Robustness

“Top management’s job isn’t to build grand strategies. Its job is to build an organization that is capable of continuously spawning cool, new business concepts” (Hamel, 2001). “The challenge for managers is to feel comfortable merely setting the direction for the future and to be ready to adapt and evolve as the environment changes” (Regine, 1998). “Traditionally, business people think about their worlds in a very mechanistic, linear way that is characterized by simple cause and effect and is predictable. Most of the world isn’t like that. Complexity theory looks at these systems in ways that are organic, nonlinear and holistic”Lewin (Lewin, 1998).

Evaluation and Validation findings

The aim of RODEO was to construct a methodology and accompanying set of tools and methods for business development based on complexity science. The 13 research and industrial partners in the team have as a result produced 'The RODEO Process', an approach with three modules that makes 6 relevant complexity science principles accessible and applicable to the organisation and the individuals in it. These principles are also used as the basis from which other tools and methods have been derived. In order to evaluate the process and find out what the added value of the process could bring to organisations, prototype tools and methods were trialed in RODEO industrial partner organisations.

Cranfield University led evaluation and validation activities but all partners have actively contributed to it in some way. I.e. all partners helped to derive the criteria used to evaluate and validate the process; industrial partners provided their organisations and human resources for implementation test beds; industrial partners took part in focus groups and/or questionnaire evaluation activities; research partners then assisted with the collation and interpretation of feedback from questionnaires. CDN, Cezanne Software and Cranfield University also led an expert validation workshop at Cranfield, where external experts from the complexity community attended a one day presentation of the RODEO Process and were asked to comment on the innovativeness and relevance of our work to complexity science.

In addition, each RODEO partner has completed a short 'story-telling' pro-forma which is to contribute to a descriptive document outlining in more detail how the RODEO process has been integrated with IP experiences. This is now also being developed in the context of a series of case study style reports on all industrial partner experiences.
The dominant themes coming out of the impact of these modules after having being trialled in European organisations over the past 6 months include the agreement by those using them that the RODEO process:

• Facilitates and contextualises the rapid understanding and pertinence of complexity science to the organisation


• Brings added-value to large organisations for whom making strategic sense of day to day changes in the context of so called turbulent 'internal' and 'external' environments is a challenge
  
• Provides a means to articulate intangible elements essential to strategy-making, where an organisation's strategy is its people who interact in a plethora of complex ways


• Facilitates and supports the dynamically evolving complex network of competency endowed actors within and between organisations


• Facilitates a greater feeling of individual and organisational robustness based on a different understanding of problems, changes and transitions, and competency development

These findings have now contributed to the process of establishing some helpful criteria by which other potential users can assess the impact of the RODEO Process on their organisations and the people in it.

In reference to competency development (individual and organisational) these criteria, or qualitative indicators, include the following:

• The possibility to identify relationships between current organisational skills inventories and current organisational situations, needs, and people


• The ability to understand the dynamically evolving competency landscape of organisation


• The ability to do so in an environment of daily business changes and transitions


• The ability to make sense of the way competencies are dynamically evolving between people in and between organisations and understand these in terms of self-organisation/emergence, diversity, edge of chaos, history/time, unpredictability, pattern recognition

In the context of monitoring and developing transitions and change:

• The ability to acknowledge the present in the context of the past


• The extent to which these are given due recognition


• The extent to which these are accepted at individual/organisational/inter-organisational levels


• The ability to articulate past and present transitions and changes at these levels


• The ability to situate and reinterpret these changes and transitions in terms of current situations and short/mid/long term envisaged futures


• The ability to articulate the above in terms of self-organisation/emergence, diversity, edge of chaos, history/time, unpredictability, pattern recognition

In terms of understanding 'problems':

• Getting to grips with problem 'fuzziness'


• Developing problem clarity


• Exploring the possibility to identify problems


• Examining the possibility to provide a solution


• Deriving possibilities to generate alternatives


• Interacting with possibilities to understand 'problems' in terms of self-organisation/emergence, diversity, edge of chaos, history/time, unpredictability, pattern recognition

RODEO/KB members coming to the event

• Laurent Brouyère


• Fiona Lettice


• Silverio Petruzzellis


• Carol Webb


• Liza Wohlfart


• Michael Wunram


• Atai Ziv

Further documentation

Please find attached a set of documents related to RODEO's work