The Next Common Sense. An E‐Manager’s Guide to Mastering Complexity

Named as one of “Wall Street’s 25 smartest players” by Worth Magazine, Internet pioneer Michael Lissack, chairman of knowledge management software company, Magi Inc., and Internet incubator, Coherence Ventures, knows all about the challenges, and opportunities, offered by the world of e‐business.

In this new and expanded edition of The Next Common Sense. Lissack and founding director of Swiss‐based Imagination Lab Foundation, Johan Roos, make the complexity of today’s corporate environment understandable, and coherence practical, as the new strategy for today’s e‐managers. They don’t attempt to offer pat answers and easy solutions. Instead, they reveal how nature organises itself, exposing the conceit of our attempts to organise ourselves differently, and discuss the leading of one’s self as much as the leading of others. They offer guiding principles to enable managers to master the complex challenges, exploring the power of metaphor in organizational life, and as the foundation of the next common sense itself.

The Internet has certainly altered the environment in which the manager’s job is done, but not the job itself. The Next Common Sense recognises that the “e” in e‐manager describes the environment, not the task: adding an e (or an m) does not change the job of management. What matters, at every level from CEOs to junior colleagues, is being able to act coherently in the face of complexity.

The old common sense was about how to deal with the separate and free‐standing units of a complicated world. The next common sense is about mastering the complex swirl of interweaving events and situations around us now. Life is faster, more interconnected, more interdependent and more interrelated in the online communities of AOL than in, for example, the supply chain of a car manufacturer.

The world of work group relationships, strategic alliances and customer networks that we collectively call an “organisation” is all about the effects of relationships between people inside and outside the organisation, rather than about controlling distinct groups of employees, customers, and suppliers. The new world is a complex one of interactions rather than distinct entities.

Coherence is the key to finding simplicity in the complex world.

What worked as strategic advice in the old complicated world turns out to be just poor directions in the new complex, Internet‐based one. Lissack and Roos demonstrate, in a down‐to‐earth, practical way, that mastering complexity through finding, nurturing and communicating coherence are the critical tasks for today’s e‐managers and executives.

Rich with examples of how today’s top companies – AOL, Southwest Airlines, Intel and Visa among others – have rejected traditional management practices to create the new organizational community of the future, they offer a five‐step action plan for achieving coherence, and detail the ten key management principles essential to the practice of the next common sense.

To interview the authors, for a review copy or for further information, please contact Angie Tainsh at Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 36 John Street, London WClN 2AT. Tel: 020 7430 0224; Fax: 020 7 404 8311; E‐mail: angiet@nbrealey‐books.com