by Philip Boxer
By including the third asymmetry, stratification can no longer take the form of a universal hierarchy, but instead must be particular to the relationship to demand. It is this which presents the business with its double challenge.
by Philip Boxer
The need for Through-Life Capability Management (TLCM) represents a step-change in the relationship between purchaser and provider that involves both parties in the whole value cycle that requires systems to be understood as more than socio-technical, and makes it necessary to model the structure-determining as well as the structure-determined processes.
by Philip Boxer
Strategy-at-the-edge requires that a double challenge be met which balances internal changes with external opportunities. The effects ladder provides a way of agreeing what this means for both customer and supplier where the customer’s demands are necessarily asymmetric.
by Philip Boxer
A proactive, demand-driven East-West dominant approach is needed to achieving step-change. A North-South dominant approach, based on encouraging Trusts to make step-changes through implementing published best practice guidelines, cannot work because it cannot deal with the complexity.
by Richard Veryard
Masood Mortazavi uses Transaction Cost Economics to explain the difference between Managing to Contract vs. Managing to Relationship. In this post, I want to link this discussion to the key notion of Asymmetric Demand.
by Philip Boxer
East-West dominance requires networked forms of organisation that can hold ‘the edge’ accountable for the way it uses the resources of the supporting organisation, but in relation to the situation in which the demand is arising. This contrasts with the hierarchical forms associated with N-S dominance. What is at stake is the performativity of what is done in relation to the demand at the edge, rather than the performance of what is done against centrally (symmetrically) defined criteria. It is not that hierarchy isn’t still necessary, but rather that it has to be situationally rather than universally defined.
by Richard Veryard
Philip’s post on Managing over the whole governance cycle draws on some important work by Max Boisot, and I wanted to expand on this a little.
by Philip Boxer
It is the personal nature of the response to the customer that distinguishes taking power to the edge of the organisation. It used to be possible to rely on ‘free’ market processes for creating such innovations, but in the 21st Century the whole cycle has to be managed. This presents those leading at the edge with a double challenge, but it also presents business leadership with the need to develop a capacity for asymmetric governance.
