Systems Thinking

Fog and Friction – The limitations of strategy when dealing with uncertainty

This blog post is a work-in-progress… Military history and grand strategy have long offered sources of inspiration to business leaders. In a previous blog on the subject, I touched on how the insights of historical figures such as Sun Tzu remain relevant to those navigating the fast-moving tech space. In that blog I made no mention of Carl von Clausewitz, one of the most pre-eminent and well-known military theorists. Here I try to make up for that omission. The Fog … Read more…

Systems Thinking – When the human is in the machine

Consider any connected product or application that you may have – a fitness device, a mapping application, a dating app, a payment app, or a smart thermostat. On the face of it, these are superficially quite simple products. A fitness app tracks your activity, a mapping app helps you get from A to B, and a dating app matches you with potential dates. However, beneath that veneer of simplicity lies something else. All these products are systems that connecting people … Read more…