Agile and intelligent adaptability is a critical goal of executives charged with redefining organizational architectures to meet the dynamic challenges of a global and connected economy. Although biological metaphors abound in management literature, the only significant progress in applying our growing understanding of biological complexity has been achieved in the field of robotics. A significant element of Expertool R&D activities has been the evaluation of successful robotics design principles to define methods for modeling dynamic and adaptive organizational systems.
The output of the R&D was our Organizational Competency Unit (OCU) - design methodology for holistic modeling and management of People, Process and Technology. Application of our methodology began in real-world environments in 2006, with successful results in business and IT units. To learn about the theoretical framework, download this white paper: The Expertool Paradigm - Management Science for the New Economy
Organizations Are Complex Systems
Decades of “lean” initiatives, which included mergers and acquisitions, traumatic losses and cost cutting have exposed the painful reality that both demand-driven growth and crisis-driven sizing down are as likely to cripple a company as to improve it. Insight into the issues underlying the organizational scale trauma can be found in recent advances in complexity theory, including a better understanding of biological scalability,
Biological scaling is fractal, that is similarity-based and therefore holistic. For organizations to benefit from the scalability and adaptability of biological design patterns requires holistic design and integrated scaling of people, process and technology. Holistic design and management can only be achieved by modeling and analyzing the organization as a dynamic, complex system.
Model and Manage Complexity with Expertool
The most important elements of understanding about how an organization interacts internally and with its environment exist in the mental models of senior managers and professional staff. Unlike traditional tools that manage data and information, The Expertool platform integrates qualitative and quantitative elements of knowledge and expert judgment into an enterprise asset (click on diagram below|right). The expertise repository enables modeling and management of the organization as a complex system.
Holistic modeling of people, process and technology is achieved by defining Organizational Competency Units (OCU). Each OCU is designed to enable the required behavirs to interact with other organizational and external entities (click on diagram below|left).
