Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics: 6th Edition

A challenging and rewarding guide to thinking differently about organisations

This is a book that radically challenges conventional ways of looking at organisations and consequently needs time to digest. It is a work that I wish I had read earlier in my business process career.

Stacey argues that the failure of culture change, process re-engineering, quality management and other initiatives that have come and gone over the last hundred years demonstrates that how we understand organisations and intervene in them to assure successful and sustainable strategic change, development and growth cannot be brought down to simple models of cause and effect.

Complexity theory and organisational thinking practice are addressed, right down to the level of individual psychological drivers and how this affects the behaviour of people in organisational systems.

Innovation occurring from the interplay of intentions is described and includes the example of Facebook. This originated from Mark Zuckerberg's website for rating girls on campus at Harvard University and then developed from model of the Harvard Connection project from Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. Facebook was not created from a business plan, but from opportunistic use of chance encounters and interconnections.

The diagnosis of organisations and the definition and management of appropriate beneficial interventions occur in a world increasingly defined by VUCA (Volatility Uncertainty Complexity Ambiguity). This requires different ways of thinking about how organisations behave are required to achieve the understanding required for control within chaos. Stacey’s book provides that guidance.