When the banks collapsed in the last financial crisis, there was a phrase bandied about, that some were ‘too big to fail’. This week i’ve been pondering something of the opposite: are some organisations ‘too big to succeed’. I’m not thinking specifically of their headcount, their geographical spread, or the physical weight of their buildings, but rather more the radical complexity of their networks, the unknowable nature of their knowledge, and the sheer inertia of their formal hierarchies. Possibly good organisations, probably doing good work, but ultimately doomed to fail through their inability to understand their true dynamics.
If you would like to read the original article, or more of Julian’s work visit his blog at https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/a-state-of-radical-complexity/
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