Interview with Esko Kilpi

As part of my global book tour I hope to have fascinating conversations with management & leadership experts around the world. One of them is Esko Kilpi, a researcher and consultant in Finland who has a focus on the “arts and sciences of complex interaction”. With Esko I talked about management & complexity. Underneath the video you can find some notes we took–with thanks to Elinor!

Update: I will be in Finland on May 28! You can still join me.

• Creativity is how to deal with uncertainty.
• The Internet is the basis to all new approaches to value creation.
• We still think that the unit of work is the individual. The basic unit of work is interaction.
• You cannot measure the performance of one team against another.
• See the manager as the product owner who makes agreements with the team.
• You are more than just the features that you’re building for this particular sprint.
• What is your purpose? What is your identity? Your manager should help you build that shared vision.
• The work is emergent from the collaboration.
• Work is doing meaningful things with meaningful people in meaningful ways.
• For more creative work, engagement is the engine that creates value.
• How do I change the organization’s culture? Better question: how do I change people’s mindsets? People, not organizations.
• The culture of an organization is an emergent property of the ways people interact.
• You cannot intervene in culture directly. You don’t first create the organization and then you work… It’s an ongoing process of organizing.
• Organization is not the structure; it’s the process.
• Organization should be much more fluid in the way we approach value creation.
• Exploration versus exploitation.
• Shouldn’t we just help organizations die more quickly and start new ones?
• Creative destruction can be a force for engagement.
• We are going to see much more dynamism in the sense of what constitutes organizations.
• The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.
• As you make decisions, you never have a complete picture.
• Uncertainty is the most important part of decision-making.
• When in unknown terrain, take small steps and bet on multiple horses.
• Make your decisions reversible.
• Every step changes the fitness landscape.