“Complexity science challenges the way we think about change.”

This second course in the certification track takes a retrospective look at the origins of the modern organization and the core assumptions around the dominant discourse in management theory. We learn how to adopt a critical reflexive attitude around the dominant discourse, and techniques to break out of old ways of thinking and breakthrough into new perspectives. Key topics include:

• what complexity science is not
• the promise and perils of complexity thinking
• creating conditions for distributed decision making
• how to design for emergent cultures
• teaming up to collaborative leadership
• how to close the knowledge-power gap
• why individual leadership is unsustainable in complex environments
• how to build strategic performance inside network teams
• a sneak preview of sense-making technologies
• resilience thinking and anti-fragile ecosystems
• cultivating reflexive thinking

In more detail, we will look at the following domains:

Strategic Management in Perspective
We take a look at the origins of the modern organization and the effect it has had on our ways of thinking. We excavate unexamined assumptions in the dominant discourse on organizational development and management. We look at 

• systemic ways of thinking about strategy and organizational dynamics
• the challenge of complexity to systemic thinking
• the shift from adaptive to responsive landscapes