Business anarchist, again

I’ve been thinking quite a bit more about the ‘business anarchist‘ idea, following a couple of great conversations yesterday with Bas van Gils in the Netherlands and Stuart Curley in London. Hence a few more notes:

• Every business-consultant is, in effect, a business anarchist: the whole point of their role is to break the existing rules and create something new.
• The same applies to business strategy (unless the strategy is ‘business as usual’ – though that isn’t a viable strategy anyway when “the times they are are a-changin'” 🙂 ).
• Anarchy is the appropriate response in a chaotic context, but the key concern is what guides the anarchy:
  • self-centric (i.e.”the kiddies’ anarchy”) leads to dysfunctional anarchy and fragmentation
  • principle-based (i.e. anarchy in the true Quaker-style sense) leads to functional anarchy and integration
• At the exact point of action and decision, the business-context is always inherently chaotic, requiring personal responsibility in the moment – hence some level of anarchy is always impled
• In the SEMPER diagnostic, level 1 (actively dysfunctional) and level 5 (wholeness-responsibility) are both examples of anarchy – but the former is self-centric, the latter is principle-based

Definitely seems worth thinking about in more depth. More later on this, anyway.