Are you excited to organize for complexity but unsure how to do it? Learn new techniques by looking back. In the early 20th century, the U.S. Navy successfully used complexity to harness new technologies, encourage organizational learning, and develop a sustained pace of innovation. Find out how!
Complexity presents us with a riddle. We cannot cause innovation but only create the conditions that enable innovation to emerge. (Juarrero, 2015) How can we do this? How do we innovate through catalysts and avoid trying to force it?
Historical examples provide valuable insights. Learn how the U.S. Navy fostered a climate of organizational learning and sustained innovation more than a century ago. Although today's mental models are different, effective lessons for today's approaches (and Lean and Agile techniques) can be found in the U.S. Navy's experience. These include:
* Using context-sensitive constraints to promote emergence
* Leveraging safe-to-fail experimentation
* Promoting evolvability through open architecture
* Encouraging sustained organizational learning
Managing Consultant and Historian, Excella
Trent Hone is a Managing Consultant with Excella and an award-winning naval historian. He works with software, IT, and other organizations to improve their art of practice, increase effectiveness, and accelerate learning. He has helped dozens of government and commercial teams around the world in Asia, Oceania, Europe, and North America.
Trent writes and speaks about organizational learning, doctrine, and strategy and how the three interrelate. He has been awarded the U.S. Naval War College's Edward S. Miller Prize and the Naval History and Heritage Command's Ernest M. Eller Prize, and he was a finalist for Lean Kanban's Brickell Key Award. He has presented at the Annual Agile Conference, Lean Kanban North America, Lean Agile US, Lean Agile Scotland, the McMullen Naval History Symposium, and the Society of Military History's Annual Meeting.