Organisational Intelligence

managing complexity

Complexity is the fundamental management challenge. Absorb complexity with organisational intelligence.

Organisations are the vital organ of the modern world. Most problems in the world today trace back to organisational failure; just as most value generated today emerges from organisational production.

Only complexity can absorb complexity. Organisations often misunderstand this and drown under structural complexity. Instead of creating a rigid framework of rules, intelligent organisations develop their capacity to produce value in a complex but carefully chosen environment.

We take an evidence-based approach to the optimisation of organisations. Organisational intelligence is not the sum of your human intelligence, organisational intelligence is the emergent effect of networked individuals working towards a metagoal.

Organisations must adapt to meet ongoing complexity requirements at varying levels of analysis. Each team should be assigned the appropriate slice of complexity. When this is done properly, general competence should propagate throughout the organisation.

Organisational Dynamics

☑ Open systems

☐ Aimed at understanding

☑ Analyse and challenge quantified assumptions

☐ Allow analysis at macro and micro levels of activity

☐ Provide insights into the emergent patterns of organisations through an understanding of foundational organisational systems

☐ Focus on internal action

☑ Foster analytical thinking

☑ Focus on pattern prediction

☐ Generate evidence supported with powerful software

☐ Can apply to multiple management strategies

Organisational Adaptation

☑ Focus on net value generation

☐ Helps the organisation keep its identity

☑ Early warning of organisational threats

☐ Models the context of organisational processes

☐ Uncovers what defines the organisation

☐ Objective standard for effective management

☑ Organisation functions as nested autonomous units

☐ Analyse both current and desired conditions

Dynamic Adaptation

Dynamic adaptability represents the ongoing integration of action and context.

Organisational Dynamics

Deals with organisational action.

Identifies threats before change processes begin.

Enables the design of rules that mitigate unintended consequences.

Supports decision-making.

Organisational Adaptability

Provides context for actions described by Organisational Dynamics.

Guides the organisation to greater net value by showing where to focus activity.

Heuristics to diagnose and design action contexts.

Shows how dynamic behaviour is influenced by ongoing conditions.

Organisational Dynamics: How should we act?

Organisational Adaptability: Where should we act?

Dynamic Adaptation: How should we act in this ongoing context?

a project development method for coordinating larger groups to achieve problem-solving, training, or innovation outcomes.

OAAR Groups

A project-based heterarchy that functions within the organisation’s responsibility hierarchy.

Use internal complexity to absorb external complexity through project development.

Help larger groups share information, reach consensus, and invent value.

Communication rules decided at the macro level.


Should include individuals that are:
☑ motivated by the question,
☑ have relevant knowledge,
☑ show enthusiasm to contribute.

1. The Question
2. Topic Generation
3. Topic Choice
4. Topic Meetings
5. Activity Proposal

Participants are free to make independent contributions at the micro level.

Group dynamics allow the efficient integration of multiple perspectives to build a shared web of understanding.

Scale problem-solving teams without sacrificing communicative fidelity.

A heterarchical structuring processes finds, develops, and communicates insightful information. This speeds up complex decision-making. Our method produces action plans with higher motivational harmony. Employees are more likely to honour the action plans resulting from this project development method.

These projects allow for distributed learning, innovation, and decision-making within a responsibility hierarchy. This approach can be used for knowledge sharing, consensus building, and even conflict resolution between large groups of people.

Ongoing, purposeful, and structured interactions produce ideas and insights that propagate throughout the OAAR Group. This project development method networks the organisation’s latent intelligence to handle greater complexity in a heterarchical fashion. This is the best way for a large group of people to agree on complex matters.

These projects combine the productivity of small groups with the knowledge of larger groups to allow dialogue-based problem-solving that is scalable, while maintaining high individual productivity.