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Donors, leaders of nonprofits, and public policy makers usually have the best of intentions to serve society and improve social conditions. But often their solutions fall far short of what they want to accomplish and what is truly needed. Moreover, the answers they propose and fund often produce the opposite of what they want over time. We end up with temporary shelters that increase homelessness, drug busts that increase drug-related crime, or food aid that increases starvation. How do...

Governments and organizations invest huge sums of money in development interventions to explicitly address poverty and its root causes. However, a high proportion of these do not work. This is because interventions are grounded in flawed assumptions about how change happens -- change is rarely linear, yet development interventions are almost entirely based on linear planning models. Change is also characterized by unintended consequences, which are not predictable by planners and by power...

The book describes what it means to say the world is complex and explores what that means for managers, policy makers and individuals. The first part of the book is about the theory and ideas of complexity. This is explained in a way that is thorough but not mathematical. It compares differing approaches, and also provides a historical perspective, showing how such thinking has been around since the beginning of civilisation. It emphasises the difference between a complexity worldview and...

The Sunday Times No.1 Bestseller From the Bestselling Author of BounceWhat links the Mercedes Formula One team with Google?What links Team Sky and the aviation industry?What connects James Dyson and David Beckham?They are all Black Box Thinkers.Black Box Thinking is a new approach to high performance, a means of finding an edge in a complex and fast-changing world. It is not just about sport, but has powerful implications for business and politics, as well as for parents and students. In...

Dialogic Organization Development is a compelling alternative to the classical action research approach to planned change. Organizations are seen as fluid,socially constructed realities that are continuously created through conversations and images change happens when those conversations and images change. Leaders and consultants can help foster, support, or accelerate the emergence of transformational possibilities by encouraging disruptions to taken-for-granted ways of thinking and acting...

Understanding and demonstrating the effectiveness of efforts to improve the lives of those living in poverty is an essential part of international development practice. But who decides what counts as good or credible evidence? Can the drive to measure results do justice to and promote transformational change change that challenges the power relations that produce and reproduce inequality, injustice and the non-fulfillment of human rights? The Politics of Evidence in International Development...

Practice an agile form of management to stop wasting time and money Scrum For Dummies is an easy to use guide to managing the tricky transition from a traditional project management methodology to the new and most popular agile framework. As the most efficient, successful methodology for team project management, Scrum relies on transparency, flexibility, and fluidity to deliver a final product that fulfills the needs of all stakeholders. Written in easy–to–read Dummies style, this book...

Why does modern life revolve around objectives? From how science is funded, to improving how children are educated -- and nearly everything in-between -- our society has become obsessed with a seductive illusion: that greatness results from doggedly measuring improvement in the relentless pursuit of an ambitious goal. In Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Stanley and Lehman begin with a surprising scientific discovery in artificial intelligence that leads ultimately to the conclusion that the...

Development economics and policy are due for a redesign. In the past few decades, research from across the natural and social sciences has provided stunning insight into the way people think and make decisions. Whereas the first generation of development policy was based on the assumption that humans make decisions deliberatively and independently, and on the basis of consistent and self-interested preferences, recent research shows that decision making rarely proceeds this way. People think...

We live in a world that is broken. For those who believe that there must be a more agile and efficient way for people to get things done, here from Scrum pioneer Jeff Sutherland is a brilliantly discursive, thought-provoking book about the leadership and management process that is changing the way we live. In the future, historians may look back on human progress and draw a sharp line designating "before Scrum" and "after Scrum." Scrum is that ground-breaking. It already drives most of the...

Complexity science--made possible by modern analytical and computational advances--is changing the way we think about social systems and social theory. Unfortunately, economists' policy models have not kept up and are stuck in either a market fundamentalist or government control narrative. While these standard narratives are useful in some cases, they are damaging in others, directing thinking away from creative, innovative policy solutions. Complexity and the Art of Public Policy outlines a...

New tools for managing complexityDoes your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone.According to The Boston Consulting Group’s fascinating Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past sixty years. And, all the while, organizational complicatedness—that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems—has increased by a whopping factor of thirty-five. In their attempt to...

It is widely recognised that the foreign aid system - of which every country in the world is a part - is in need of drastic overhaul. There are conflicting opinions as to what should be done. Some call for dramatic increases to achieve longstanding promises. Others bang the drum for cutting it altogether, and suggest putting the fate of poor and vulnerable people in the hands of markets or business. A few argue that what is needed is creative, innovative transformation. The arguments in Aid...

IN 2013, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) was awarded a grant under the Kanishka Project to develop a handbook for monitoring and evaluating counter violent extremism (CVE) policies and programmes. The aim of this handbook is to support CVE policy-makers and practitioners (those who design, manage and evaluate CVE programmes), by providing them with key terms regarding violent extremism and radicalisation, describing the purpose of evaluation, and...