Responding to complexity with the Management Compass®

We're going to win and the industrial West is going to lose. There's not much you can do about it, because it's in yourselves that you're going to lose. Your organizations are Taylorian, but what's worse is that your heads are too. You're totally convinced that you can make your companies run smoothly by distinguishing between leaders and executors, thinkers and doers. These were the words of Konoshuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic, in 1988. He understood that our work was becoming so complex that, in order to respond to it, we needed to federate knowledge instead of continuing with the Taylorian approach to decision-making.

What kind of complexity are we talking about? The complexity created by market players, customers, competitors and public authorities, through their demands: ever more, ever faster, ever safer, ever better targeted, ever more adjusted, ever cheaper, ever more compliant... management cannot control everything to maintain the optimum offer. The element of randomness is growing, and everything is interdependent and systemic. Winning market share, or even just maintaining existing market share, is becoming increasingly complex as the environment changes. In project management, the proportion of failures was very high, ranging from 65% to 80% depending on the authors and their definition of failure. Despite the tools developed over the last twenty years, this proportion has not improved. The finger is pointed at the insufficient motivation of the players involved.

What engineer working in a factory, design office or laboratory doesn't feel the impact of his teammates' state of mind on the progress of his projects? None. But it's hard for them to express the difference they feel. Even less so in financial terms.

The method we set out here involves mapping the current collective mindset, and assessing the mindset in which we would best deal with the actual complexity. If there is no difference, all is well. If there is a discrepancy, we assess the value (in euros) that the organization is dissipating. This provides the missing justification and enables the decision to be made. The aim of this article is to show how this is done, and what difference it makes to our world. This method is within the reach of any engineer.