The Bee book by Craig Smith and Paul Rigby has got me thinking. It is an allegorical tale of a hive of bees that is faced with a catastrophic change in their environment. The hive needs to take decisive action if it is to survive. It as a clear metaphor for the way that organisations need to work to thrive in this ever more complex world in which we live. Today, change is a constant.
And that is what I have been thinking about. In the book something disastrous, or at least potentially disastrous happens and it allows us to follow the trials and tribulations of the organisational structure as it tries to cope. I know it is an enjoyable tale to get you thinking and that is what it has done.
But in my world change doesn’t happen in single bites. It is something that happens in a complex and interlocking ways that make almost any decision fraught with implications. At the moment for example we are looking to replace our social care system with either one or two replacements while at the same time as preparing to buy one or more Electronic Document and Records Management systems (EDRMS). The decision as to the first will affect the latter and the decision of the latter will affect the first. It is a real Catch-22.
Add to this our plans to replace our desk top operating system which clearly has links to EDRMS and therefore to the social care systems then add a requirement for a corporate approach to Business Intelligence and you can start to see the complexity that we and many others are dealing with.
This is just a microcosm, a fraction of what we have to contend with if you include other systems developments, upgrades, patching, the changing face of technology, public cloud and of course the ever present, and growing threat of cyber security.
Our change is very complex. I haven’t got to the end of the book yet, so no spoilers.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 